○張軍輝

Worm that can break down plastic

Plastic pollution has become one of the largest threats to the environment and the lives of creatures on the earth. It can be seen everywhere, in the city, in the countryside, in the oceans and now people even find micro?plastics as high as 8848 meters above sea lev?el on Mount Qomolangma and as far as in the North Pole.

Why does plastic occupy nearly the whole earth? Because plastic is really hard to break down.

So，many countries have banned the one-single-use plastic bags. But the problem still remains. Good news is that a recent re?search has found that a chemical from a kind of worm can break down plastic. This worm is wax worm. Researchers found enzymes in its saliva that can break down plastic in a rela?tively short time.

Bertocchini is a female scientist and she accidently found this fact. She put the wax worms in a plastic bag and when she returned later, she found the bag was full of holes. She wondered if the worms were eating the plas?tic, and she did experiments to find that two enzymes in the worm′s saliva could break down plastic in only a few hours at room tem?perature.

塑料污染已經(jīng)成為影響環(huán)境和地球生物生存的最大威脅之一。塑料無(wú)處不在，城市、鄉(xiāng)村、海洋都有它的身影，人們甚至在8 848 米高的珠穆朗瑪峰和遙遠(yuǎn)的北極都發(fā)現(xiàn)了塑料微顆粒。

為什么塑料幾乎占據(jù)了整個(gè)地球？因?yàn)樗芰虾茈y降解。

所以許多國(guó)家禁止使用一次性塑料袋。但是問(wèn)題仍然存在。好消息是最近的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)一種蟲(chóng)子體內(nèi)的化學(xué)物質(zhì)可以降解塑料。這個(gè)蟲(chóng)子是蠟蟲(chóng)。研究人員在它的唾液中找到了可以在相對(duì)短的時(shí)間內(nèi)降解塑料的酶。

波特切尼是一名女科學(xué)家。她不經(jīng)意間發(fā)現(xiàn)了這個(gè)現(xiàn)象。她把蠟蟲(chóng)放進(jìn)塑料袋，當(dāng)她再次見(jiàn)到塑料袋時(shí)，發(fā)現(xiàn)了袋子全是洞。她懷疑是蟲(chóng)子在吃塑料，她做了實(shí)驗(yàn)，結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)蠟蟲(chóng)唾液中有兩種酶，可以在室溫條件下，幾小時(shí)內(nèi)分解塑料。