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Finding Genius Podcast

Could Superworms Be The Answer To Our Plastic Crisis? | Taking A Closer Look At Microbial Research

Finding Genius Podcast

Richard Jacobs

Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.41K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we connect with Dr. Chris Rinke, an ARC Future Fellow, and Senior Lecturer at the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics (ACE), University of Queensland, Australia. He joins us today to discuss a very interesting topic: plastic-eating superworms.

Dr. Rinke's research centers around microbial biology – specifically looking into the metabolic diversity of uncultured microbes and how they contribute to bacterial plastic degradation. How could this area of investigation affect our problems surrounding plastic pollution? Dr. Rinke is determined to find out…

Jump in now to uncover:

  • The fundamental roles that microbes play in everyday life.
  • What superworms are, and how they can survive eating only plastic. 
  • Which enzymes are involved in breaking down polystyrene. 

Click here to learn more about Dr. Rinke and his work!

Episode also available on Apple Podcast: http://apple.co/30PvU9C

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

But I have to start wasn't always into interest in microbiology,

0:03.4

originally I started with marine biology,

0:05.5

and then I focused on small and small things.

0:08.4

And because I realized how important microbes are,

0:10.9

and maybe I give you a quick example here.

0:12.6

So if you get up in the morning, right,

0:14.6

then you take your first breath,

0:16.0

you breathe oxygen.

0:17.6

And well, without microbes, that wouldn't be possible.

0:20.4

Right, if you go back, you know what the history

0:21.9

about 2.3 billion years ago,

0:23.6

some microbes figured out how to fix CO2 to produce sugar,

0:27.2

and as a byproduct to produce oxygen.

0:29.5

And that was disaster first,

0:31.0

because oxygen was quite for many organisms back then,

0:33.8

but they adapted, and using oxygen

0:36.1

and gained a lot of energy,

0:37.2

or to feed that allowed the whole evolution

0:39.3

of the larger, higher organisms, including us human.

0:42.4

Forget frequently asked questions,

0:44.2

common sense, common knowledge, or Google.

0:46.7

How about advice from a real genius?

...

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