This is not a SFW instance. NSFW communities will be tagged, and efforts will be made to keep SFW communities clean, but proceed at your own comfort level.
Probably concerned about worst case scenarios. This is a bioengineered yeast that eats PET. What if it populates your gut and fucks up your gut fauna and hurts you?
What if you shit it out and it gets into some waste area with lots of plastic and starts multiplying uncontrollably?
What if it evolved to eat other plastic and now all our current plastic starts literally molding?
There’s a lot of weird shit that you can be concerned about. Might be low risk but low risk of extreme new scenario.
Widespread contamination with such microscopic seed crystals may lead to the impression that the original polymorph has “disappeared”. In a few cases, such as progesterone and paroxetine hydrochloride, the disappearance gradually spread across the world, and it is suspected that it is because Earth’s atmosphere has over time become permeated with tiny seed crystals. It is believed that seeds as small as a few million molecules (about 10^−15 grams) are sufficient for converting one morph to another, making unwanted disappearance of morphs particularly difficult to prevent.
Wait they haven’t even tasted it? If I was a scientist turning plastic into food I would be at least licking it.
Probably concerned about worst case scenarios. This is a bioengineered yeast that eats PET. What if it populates your gut and fucks up your gut fauna and hurts you?
What if you shit it out and it gets into some waste area with lots of plastic and starts multiplying uncontrollably?
What if it evolved to eat other plastic and now all our current plastic starts literally molding?
There’s a lot of weird shit that you can be concerned about. Might be low risk but low risk of extreme new scenario.
Ice-9 but for plastic!
Niche reference but I’m here for it
Or like Ritonavir
Very cool!
Remarkable. Actual sci-fi grade stuff.
Side plot point in Niven’s Ringworld/Protector series, only with superconductors.
And also in The Andromeda Strain.
Sounds great! The world will recover, without the scourge of plastics!
Those are mental images that I didn’t want
Acceptable damage.
Can’t be any worse than fast food!
Yeah, unintended consequences can be devastating.
It’s possible they did taste it but can’t say it because they didn’t get permissions to do it.
Bingo. They 100% ate it, but the university lawyers don’t want to be liable for poisoning a bunch of grad students.
So everyone’s going to pretend the students didn’t eat the plastic cookies.
Get NileBlue on the case!