Key laboratory finds marine fungi that can effectively degrade polyethylene and other plastics

On March 7 , the Journal of Hazardous Materials , an international academic journal, published an article entitled " A marine fungus Alternaria alternata FB1 efficiently degrades polyethylene ", reporting that Sun Chaomin's group of experimental marine biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that polyethylene ( PE ) can be efficiently degraded.

Plastic is a general term for a class of high-molecular polymers.

Since 2016 , Sun Chaomin's team has collected thousands of plastic wastes from offshore Qingdao.

Degradation effect of marine fungus Alternaria alternataFB1 on polyethylene plastics

Morphology of the marine fungus Alternaria alternataFB1 after 4 months of treatment of polyethylene plastic

Detection of the degradation of polyethylene plastics by various methods of marine fungus Alternaria alternataFB1

Identification of polyethylene plastic degradation products by marine fungus Alternaria alternata FB1 by gas chromatography - mass spectrometry 

Determination of Enzyme System and Functional Verification of Marine Fungus Alternaria alternataFB1 for Degrading Polyethylene Plastics

Although the fungus is able to degrade PE plastics, it takes a long time (up to several months)

The marine fungus Alternaria alternataFB1 has obvious degradation effect on various plastics after improved conditions (1 month )

The marine fungus Alternaria alternataFB1 has a significant short-term degradation effect on some plastics after improved conditions

Plastic-treated cultures of marine fungus Alternaria alternataFB1 produce antibacterial actives

Rongrong Gao, a doctoral student in the Key Laboratory of Experimental Marine Biology, is the first author, and researcher Chaomin Sun is the corresponding author

　　Related papers :

　　Rongrong Gao, Rui Liu, Chaomin Sun ^* .

　　Paper link: https://