Generally speaking, plastic is incredibly resistant to breaking down. That's certainly true of the trillion polyethylene plastic bags that people use each and every year. But researchers reporting in Current Biology on April 24 may be on track to find a solution to plastic waste. The key is a caterpillar commonly known as a wax worm.

一般而言，塑料是一種難以降解的材料，而另一個事實是人們每年使用數萬億只塑料袋，這樣就導致了一個全球性的環境污染問題。但在4月24日有研究者在Current Biology 上發表了一篇文章，該文章宣稱找到一種解決塑料垃圾的新途徑，而這一解決方案的核心是一種叫蠟螟蟲的小蟲子。

"We have found that the larva of a common insect, Galleria mellonella, is able to biodegrade one of the toughest, most resilient, and most used plastics: polyethylene," says Federica Bertocchini of the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Spain. A previous study (doi: 10.1021/es504038a) has shown that Plodia interpunctella wax worms, the larvae of dian mealmoths, can also digest plastic.

西班牙坎塔布里亞的生物醫學和生物技術學院的Federica Bertocchini宣稱“我們發現一種叫做蠟螟的小蟲子的幼體能夠消化一種用途最廣、最難降解的聚乙烯塑料”。在這之前有一篇文章（doi: 10.1021/es504038a）表明印度谷螟的幼蟲也可以消化塑料。

Bertocchini and her colleagues made the discovery quite by accident, after noticing that plastic bags containing wax worms quickly became riddled with holes. Further study showed that the worms can do damage to a plastic bag in less than an hour.After 12 hours, all that munching of plastic leads to an obvious reduction in plastic mass. The researchers showed that the wax worms were not only ingesting the plastic, they were also chemically transforming the polyethylene into ethylene glycol. This is suspected to be the case in Plodia interpunctella as well.

Bertocchini及其同事偶然間發現裝有蠟螟蟲的塑料袋很快就出現了小洞，進一步研究后他們發現這種蟲子可以在一小時之內破壞掉一只塑料袋。12小時之后，所有被咀嚼過的塑料都明顯變成了膠質體。研究者表示這些蠟螟蟲不僅會咀嚼這些塑料，也會將聚乙烯塑料轉化為乙二醇。研究表明印度谷螟蟲也具有消化聚乙烯塑料的能力。

Although wax worms wouldn't normally eat plastic, the researchers suspect that their ability is a byproduct of their natural habits. Wax moths lay their eggs inside beehives. The worms hatch and grow on beeswax, which is composed of a highly diverse mixture of lipid compounds. The researchers say the molecular details of wax biodegradation require further investigation, but it's likely that digesting beeswax and polyethylene involves breaking down similar types of chemical bonds. "Wax is a polymer, a sort of 'natural plastic,' and has a chemical structure not dissimilar to polyethylene," Bertocchini says.

雖然，蠟螟蟲并不以塑料作為食物，但是研究者相信它們的這種消耗塑料的能力和它們的生物習性有很大的關系。蠟螟蟲會將它們的卵產在蜂房中，它們的幼蟲會在蜂蠟上孵化和成長，而蜂蠟是一種由多種膠質組成的混合物。研究者表示蠟螟蟲消化聚乙烯的細節還需要進一步研究，但可以確定在消化蜂蠟和聚乙烯時會涉及到類型相同的化學鍵的變化。Bertocchini表示“蜂蠟是一種自然界存在的聚合物，它和聚乙烯有著相似的化學結構”。

As the molecular details of the process become known, the researchers say it could be used to devise a biotechnological solution to managing polyethylene waste. They'll continue to explore the process in search of such a strategy.

隨著對于聚乙烯生物降解過程中分子結構變化的進一步研究，研究者將能夠設計成一條聚乙烯生物降解的解決方案。

"We are planning to implement this finding into a viable way to get rid of plastic waste, working towards a solution to save our oceans, rivers, and all the environment from the unavoidable consequences of plastic accumulation," Bertocchini says. "However," she adds, "we should not feel justified to dump polyethylene deliberately in our environment just because we now know how to bio-degrade it."

Bertocchini表示“我們計劃通過這樣一種生物降解的方法去解決塑料制品積累給我們的海洋、河流及自然環境帶來的危害”，但是“我們也不要因為已經知道如何降解聚乙烯材料而故意向自然環境傾倒聚乙烯制品”。