A student may have found a solution to one of theworld's most urgent environmental crises – breeding bacteria capable of “eating” plastic and potentially breaking it down into harmless by-products.

一名学生发现了可以用来解决当今世界最亟待解决的环境危机的方法。那就是繁殖可以“吃”塑料，并将其分解成无害的副产品的微生物。

The microbes degrade polyethylene terephthalate– one of the world's most common plastics, used in clothing, drinks bottles and food packaging.

该微生物可以对世界上最常见的塑料——聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯进行降解。该塑料常被用于布料，饮料瓶，还有食物包装。

It takes centuries to break down, in the meantime doing untold damage to its surroundings.

这种塑料通常要好几百年才能降解，同时也会对环境有着不可估量的损害。

Morgan Vague, who is studying biology at Reed College in Oregon, said the process, if sped up, could play a “big part” of solutions to the planet's plastic problem, which sees millions of tonnesdumped in landfill and oceans every year.

就读于俄勒冈里德学院生物专业的学生Morgan Vague，称如果进展加速的话，就能够解决世界上“大部分”的塑料问题，因为每年都有百万吨的塑料垃圾掩埋或者投入海中。

Around 300 million tonnes of plastic is discarded each year, and only about 10 per cent of it is recycled.

每年有3亿吨塑料垃圾被丢弃，其中只有10%会循环再利用。

“When I started learning about the statistics about all the plastic waste we have, essentially that told me we have a really serious problem here and we need some way to address it,” Ms Vague told .

“当我了解到这些塑料垃圾的统计数据，我意识到问题时多么的严峻，我们需要一些方法来处理，”Vague女士说道。

After she began learning about bacterial metabolism and “all the crazy things bacteria can do”, the student decided to find out if there were microbes out there able to degrade plastic.

在学习了细菌代谢并了解了“细菌可以处理这些疯狂的物质之后”她决定找出是否有细菌可以降解塑料。

She began hunting for microbes adapted to degrade plastic in the soil and water around refineries in her hometown of Houston.

于是她开始寻找她家乡休斯敦附近精炼厂旁边可以降解土壤和水中的塑料的微生物。

Taking her samples back to college in Portland, Oregon, Ms Vague began testing around 300 strains of bacteria for lipase, a fat-digesting enzyme potentially capable of breaking down plastic and making it palatable for the bacteria.

她把样品带回了俄勒冈州波特兰市，Vague女士带回了300种脂肪酶细菌，把这些细菌培养成可以分解塑料。

She identified 20 that produced lipase, and of those three that boasted high levels of the enzyme.

她挑出其中的20种可以产生脂肪酶，其中的有三种产生的酶含量最高。

Next she put the three microbes, on a forced diet of PET she cut from strips of water bottles.

之后她将塑料水瓶裁成条状，将这三种新培养的细菌放入。

She was stunned to find the bacteria worked to digest the PET.

让她震惊的是，细菌开始分解塑料。

“It looks like it breaks it down into harmless by-products that don't do any environmental damage, so right now what it's doing is breaking down the hydrocarbons within the plastic, and then the bacteria is able to use that as food and fuel,” she said.

“看起来细菌把塑料变成了一种无害的副产品，而且对环境不会造成没有任何损坏，现在看来细菌分解塑料中碳氢化合物，细菌将其用作食物或者是燃料，“她说。

But she warned there was a “long way to go” until we will start to see the microbes eating plastic at anything like the rate useful in disposing of plastics.

不过该学生说，直到细菌分解塑料的速度能够赶上塑料被丢弃的速度，还有一段很长的路要走，

The next step, said Jay Mellies, a microbiologist who supervised MsVague's thesis, is to speed it up, improve pre-treatments on the PET to make it more palatable, and to get the bacteria to work on a variety of plastics.

该学生的论文导师、微生物学家Jay Mellies说要提高微生物的分解的速度，下一步让细菌更适合分解塑料，而且适用于各种不同的塑料。

“The plastic problem is huge and all of us are beginning to be aware of it,” he said. “This is not going to be the total solution, but I think it's going to be part of the solution.”

“塑料的问题很严峻，而且我们也都开始引起重视，”他说“这不是最完善的解决方式，不过我想这项研究能解决一部分的问题。”

Professor John McGeehan, a biologist at the University of Plymouth, who has done research into plastic-degrading enzymes, warned MsVague's research was in its early stages and more testing was needed.

普利茅斯的生物学家McGeehan，之前做过降解塑料酶的研究，告诫Vague女士，其研究还处在初级阶段，还有许多的测试要做。

“These are naturally occurring bacteria that are out there in the environment and we're not looking to genetically engineer them, we're just trying to isolate bacteria and then treat the plastic in a way the bacteria can naturally digest it.”

“在自然环境中被来就存在着可以降解塑料的细菌，我们不必人为的改变它们，我们只要把细菌隔离，然后提供塑料，它们就可以自动把塑料降解。”

（翻译：林浔鸥）