The Styrofoam container that holds your takeout cheeseburger may contribute to the population’s growing resistance to antibiotics.
The Styrofoam container that holds your takeout cheeseburger may contribute to the population’s growing resistance to antibiotics.
According to scientists at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, discarded polystyrene broken down into microplastics provides a cozy home not only for microbes and chemical contaminants but also for the free-floating genetic materials that deliver to bacteria the gift of resistance.
A study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials describes how the ultraviolet aging of microplastics in the environment make them apt platforms for antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs). These genes are armored by bacterial chromosomes, phages and plasmids, all biological vectors that can spread antibiotic resistance to people, lowering their ability to fight infections.
The study led by Rice civil and environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez in collaboration with researchers in China and at the University of Houston also showed chemicals leaching from the plastic as it ages increase the susceptibility of vectors to horizontal gene transfer, through which resistance spreads.
Read more at Rice University
Image: A fluorescent microscopy image shows phages adsorbed by microplastics. Rice University researchers and their colleagues found that chemical-leaching plastics draw bacteria and other vectors and make them susceptible to antibiotic resistant genes. (Credit: Alvarez Research Lab/Rice University)
