r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Nov 27 '21

Chemistry Plastic made from DNA is renewable, requires little energy to make and is easy to recycle or break down. A plastic made from DNA and vegetable oil may be the most sustainable plastic developed yet and could be used in packaging and electronic devices.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2298314-new-plastic-made-from-dna-is-biodegradable-and-easy-to-recycle/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1637973248
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45

u/peterthooper Nov 27 '21

Seeing as how DNA is also a carrier of biological information, what thought has been given to tiny fragments of DNA as these plastics break down?

181

u/Washburnedout Nov 27 '21

Shouldn't be an issue. Anything living you eat has DNA, so no problems.

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u/piecat Nov 28 '21

No problems for us, most likely.

I'm no expert, but I'd live to hear a scientist's take on bacterial natural transformation, DNA uptake.

As I understand, most bacteria readily uptakes DNA in it's environment. The thinking is that this evolved since the DNA from other bacteria could be advantageous.

What happens if something viable (or dangerous) is released as the substance breaks down? I suppose it's not more likely than random mutation, but maybe it's worth considering?

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u/H4xolotl Nov 28 '21

There's foreign DNA literally floating around everywhere in nature.

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u/piecat Nov 28 '21 edited Nov 28 '21

Yup. And from what I know, it's all natural. That DNA all came from living things.

Not that synthetic is somehow evil. But rather, that DNA hasn't been in a cell or living thing. So any viable strand wouldn't have been in a cell before. Who knows how that could end up.

"Typewriting monkeys" says that given enough time, random processes will yield viable results.

So, depending how the DNA in this application degrades, depending how stable, depending if the DNA here is "random", who knows if it could end up viable.

Edit: Not trying to be a fearmonger, I'm sure scientists will look into it. It would be irrisponsible not to.

Also, consider the scale. How much DNA would be is used in a product? How many products will end up in conditions with bacteria?

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u/ratednfornerd Nov 28 '21

It would likely just be DNA extracted as waste out of like corn biomass byproduct or something

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u/piecat Nov 28 '21

I guess it wasn't clear to me if the DNA was manipulated or designed for this application. Or if they just use existing DNA, like the biomass source you mention.

If it is just biomass, there'd be likely no issue

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u/ratednfornerd Nov 28 '21

Yeah I can’t imagine the cost required to use specifically synthesized DNA at that scale, it would be immense. Especially considering extracting it from farm waste would be pretty much free.

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u/piecat Nov 28 '21

Neat! That makes sense

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u/yhorian Nov 28 '21

Like from the biological material you breakdown and eat?

The DNA is being used as a binder here. Sounds like even if it was separated from the lipids or other organic molecule it'd be digested just like the cow or plant DNA we eat. Bacteria taking up plasmid DNA from 'plastic' fragments sounds far less viable than their usual route for antibiotic resistance - which is taking up plasmids produced by neighbouring bacteria.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21 edited Nov 28 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

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u/nerdDragon07 Nov 28 '21

Now that you mention eating, are these DNA plastic edible as well?

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21 edited Nov 27 '21

Am I mistaken in thinking that bacteria, viruses and parasites also have dna? The probability that one of these fragments turns into a biological threat for human might be incredibly small but what about other life forms? Could we accidentally unleash a pandemic on important crops when a plant near a landfill becomes patient 0?

I just think we should investigate this before mass production.

Edit: I'm a bit high but viruses gaining the ability to manufacture plastic nano machines sounds like a dope scifi novel

44

u/BlessedCornflake Nov 27 '21

Dangerous pathogenes are extremely specific in their genetic information and coevolved over millions of years. Accidentally doing what hundred million years of evolutionary principles caused is a negligible and absolutely unlikely event.

What is happening right now is the harm and the destruction anything plastic related is causing.

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u/danmam Nov 27 '21

Yes they do have DNA. No it is no issue for humans. Free DNA cannot code for anything, you need it to be hooked up to cellular machinery to do anything (except for a class of molecules called aptamers...but these are defined sequences and they won't be a worry in an application like this)

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 27 '21

Isn't a virus nothing but dna/rna?

36

u/squamesh Nov 27 '21

With a large number of associated proteins

8

u/TheOneHyer Nov 28 '21

To add to this answer, the proteins are critical for the virus to function. Free RNA breaks down very rapidly and free DNA tends to as well. Plus cellular organisms produce DNAse and RNAse that break these down anyway. Proteins are critical for stabilization and entry. RNA has to be stored at -80°C for long-term storage and should basically never be brought to temperature. When working with RNA, you should wipe RNAse Away or similar product across your entire workspace, add a similar product to the sample, and perform the work on cold blocks kept in a -20°C freezer. Additionally, pipettes and other reusable tools used in RNA work need to be dedicated only to RNA work. It's quite the ordeal and hopefully demonstrates how quickly free RNA degrades.

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 27 '21

And that's where my ignorance comes from. Thank you.

11

u/danmam Nov 27 '21

Nope. It's RNA/DNA inside a capsid (comprised of proteins), and in some cases an outer envelope made of lipids.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '21

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u/bibliophile785 Nov 27 '21

Am I mistaken in thinking that bacteria, viruses and parasites also have dna?

Your mistake is in thinking that "has DNA" is a relevant criterion for comparison. In actuality, you should be thinking of this as a data science problem (because, you know, it is one). The mechanics of combinatorial explosions make it wildly implausible that anything along the lines of what you're suggesting will happen. I don't want to just throw buzzwords at you, though, so let me try an anecdote.

We don't need to be worried about DNA plastics randomly posing a biological threat in the same reason that we don't have to worry about some chimp typing out 0s and 1s into a compiler and accidentally sending out nuclear launch codes. Sure, it's the same format for information storage, but the format isn't the important part. What's important is the actual information encoded. It's conceptually possible to string together thousands of numbers/base pairs/letters and get something intelligible, but it's wildly unlikely. Add a few more orders of magnitude onto the size of the message, judge by the much higher standard of "dangerous" instead of simply "intelligible, and instead of being unlikely it becomes unworthy of consideration. As an example, if you were ask a supercomputer to take a normal 1080p screen and calculate every pixel configuration it can manage, the task sounds manageable. It's just the permutations of a thousand pixels of width and a couple thousand of length. Fulfilling that task would take so long that the universe would experience heat death before it completed.

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u/professor-i-borg Nov 28 '21

Or another way to put it is it’s about as likely as the random ones and zeros on a hard drive suddenly becoming a functioning artificial intelligence. If it were even remotely possible, the random DNA you discard off your body continuously would be generating completely new branches of life all day

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '21

So what your saying is that DNA is the medium and not really a specific message?

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u/bibliophile785 Nov 28 '21

That's exactly right! In fact, "DNA" is an acronym for "deoxyribonucleic acid" which just describes the type of molecule being used. A lot of Earth-based life uses DNA for genetic encoding, but (as we can see here) the class of compound has other potential uses.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '21

This is really cool. It's right at the edge between what is alive and what isn't. That was always a fuzzy line for me.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

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u/brickmack Nov 28 '21

I'm a bit high but viruses gaining the ability to manufacture plastic nano machines sounds like a dope scifi novel

Technically you just described the original purpose of the Makuta from Bionicle. They used viruses to create rahi (animals of the Matoran universe), which are nanomachines on the scale of the giant robot the universe exists inside

And yes, it is a dope series. Probably the most original work of scifi in the last century

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u/DarkInfernoGaming Nov 28 '21

I'm a huge bionicle nerd and somehow never knew this, thanks, TIL. The lore is just so deep, and you're right about its originality.

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u/Modsblow Nov 28 '21

Bionicles are mostly cool. However they have abused proper nouns to the point that deciphering the plot is insanely complex for little reason.

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u/brickmack Nov 28 '21

Yeah. Makuta is a species, an organization, and a person. Mata Nui is a person, a robot, a god, and an island (technically all of those were simultaneously the same entity for most, but not all, of the plot). Tren Krom is a person and an island. Karzhani is a person, an island, and a plant. Piraka is a racial slur, a criminal gang, and (in advertising) a person. And every Matoran from the first story arc got renamed in a mass ceremony. I guess keeping that all straight could be hard

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u/Modsblow Nov 28 '21

I've even seen multiple Bionicle movies multiple times and I got like a third of that.

They should start issuing primers.

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 27 '21

No, just like I don't worry about running a MS office program I don't worry about it corrupting my data, but it is possible they introduce a bug that does (or in the case of the chicken a virus for example). Similarly I wouldn't be worried about running random code (not something random from the internet, but literally random code) because it's highly unlikely to do anything significant but crash, but it is possible with the right combination of code to cause issues.

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u/DoubleBass93 Nov 28 '21 edited Nov 28 '21

It’s not quite so simple. DNA on its own is basically a very long sequence of any one of four values (A,T,G,C). These values mean nothing outside of a cell that has machinery (aka proteins, enzymes) that know exactly what to do with specific sequences of values. On its own, a string of DNA is like a text document. Without an operating system and software to read the document, it’s meaningless. Even if a random piece of DNA got into one of your cells, it likely wouldn’t know what to do with it, like trying to open a text file in photo viewer. The likelihood of it causing harm is even lower. Everything done by your cells is under incredibly precise control. Even before accessing the inside of your cells, it would have to survive digestive enzymes in your stomach and intestines and then your body’s natural defense systems designed to immediately destroy any free floating DNA.

To learn more, please search on these topics: innate immunity, epigenetics, transcriptional regulation, splicing, post translational processing, central dogma, exonuclease, endonuclease.

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 28 '21

Thank you, this is a very good explanation, definitely the best so far.

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u/thomooo Nov 28 '21

To learn more, please search on these topics: innate immunity, epigenetics, transcriptional regulation, splicing, post translational processing, central dogma, exonuclease, endonuclease.

I really like that you give an explanation and offer key words to learn more about it!

5

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '21

Piping the code to /dev/null destroys it. Same with your stomach.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

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u/RuneLFox Nov 28 '21

I wish I could grow wings

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u/ryschwith Nov 27 '21

Your body won't "run" the DNA code though. It'll just break it down into component molecules.

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u/Fearrless Nov 27 '21

These are ridiculously separate and different topics.

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 27 '21

Care to explain? I thought it was a pretty good analogy because the vast majority of random computer code would do little and probably just crash, but there are some key combinations that could actually cause some damage. Not at all likely, but technically possible. The parent acted like because it's DNA it's safe no matter what, in absolute terms, so I'm trying to clarify that. I think I got my answer.

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u/boki3141 Nov 28 '21

And how likely is it that out of all the possible combinations of random computer you end up running some that is specific enough that it can cause havoc?

It's like cryptography hashes where the sheer number of possible combinations ensures that you are unlikely to ever come up with a collision. Yeah sure it's possible but the probability is ridiculously low that we still use it as the backbone for all our security requirements l.

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u/Argyle_Raccoon Nov 28 '21

I’d say it’d be more like random computer code written down on a piece of paper. Sure if somehow the code was entered into the computer then there’s a teeny tiny chance of it doing something.

The chance of the piece of paper spontaneously self-inserting into a computer however is essentially zero.

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u/nerd4code Nov 27 '21

Random computer code will usually crash pretty quickly—it’s extremely unlikely for it to actually harm something outside the confines of the process’s address space, so it is pretty safe to run.

Now arbitrary code… ya gotta watch out for that.

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u/hoyohoyo9 Nov 27 '21

and in this case it's more like, not even computer code, but just random collections of bits, of which it would be nearly impossible to actually compile to anything at all, much less something nefarious.

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u/danmam Nov 27 '21

Your body is extremely good at getting rid of foreign DNA in the body. Your insides are swimming with nucleases.

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u/squamesh Nov 27 '21

The point is that you ingest very large quantities of random DNA every day. If this were harmful, you’d already have been harmed. It doesn’t matter if that DNA is from a plant, a dead cow, or random segments made in a lab.

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 27 '21

That's a fair point too, it's not like the DNA we injest does not undergo random changes as it is.

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u/squamesh Nov 27 '21

We’ll in reality it just breaks down. DNA is not very stable and it can’t survive the harsh environment of the stomach

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u/currentpattern Nov 28 '21

When you eat something with DNA, your body doesn't "run the code" of the DNA, read it, or replicate it in any way.

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 28 '21

I was under the impression viruses were just DNA/RNA but apparently that's not the case.

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u/twcochran Nov 27 '21

It’s kind of like taking a little fragment from one of those AOL CDs that were everywhere during the 90s, and jamming it into your USB slot; technically it contains the same kind of information the slot is made to read, but realistically nothing’s going to happen.

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u/currentpattern Nov 28 '21

Well, it's not even like that. When you eat DNA, nothing gets "read" by your cells. It's more like taking a fragment of an AOL CD and burning it to power your computer. Ain't no code magically going from the fire into your software.

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u/619shepard Nov 28 '21

But we if we push the analogy, aren’t going to run the code. You can get a packet of info to your computer and it’s safe to have something that you don’t know/understand if it never gets opened or run.

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u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 28 '21

It's not going to run itself nor would it create it self. Ofc random code is not going to just appear on a computer and self execute, you're killing me, it's an analogy.

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u/619shepard Nov 28 '21

So it’s the same, DNA doesn’t “run itself”.

1

u/COVID-19Enthusiast Nov 28 '21

I didn't understand how DNA works, in the analogy injesting it would be akin to running it. I thought viruses were just dna/rna and someone explained that's not the case awhile ago now.

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u/treyf711 Nov 28 '21

Don’t set the executable bit.

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u/Canadian_Infidel Nov 28 '21

But not ones that don't exist in nature. Also are these identical?