Ludmilla Aristilde

We're talking more bacteria because bacteria have very complex metabolism.

They also have the ability to do so many things.

As we know, we have beneficial bacteria in our gut that really helps us to be healthy.

We also have bacteria in the environment, in soils, for example.

We have bacteria that really allows nitrogen and carbon to be recycled in soils.

We can also harness bacteria

the ability of bacteria to treat contaminants in the environment.

Yes, so bacteria in general, they have capabilities to digest, hard to digest materials.

Like if you think about it, I like to give an example.

If you're someone who loves to hike and you walk around a forest or a mountain and you will see wood on the soil, and eventually this wood will be decaying and degrading over a long period of time.

And there are microbes that are doing that.

Now the chemistry of this wood, there's a lot of similarity between that chemistry and the chemistry that you'll find in plastics.

So we, in my lab, we work on microbes that can do this kind of hard to digest kind of metabolism.

And then we went out and explore whether or not they can actually eat plastics as their food.

Yes.

So there are different types of plastics.

I like to highlight that.

So they're so persistent because of their carbon to carbon bond.

Essentially, it is a bond that is really hard to break.

But also there are types of plastics that are easier to break than others because these plastics also have some oxygen that are spiced out within the structure of carbon to carbon bond.