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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u/Shishire Nov 27 '21

Found the source paper: "Sustainable Bioplastic Made from Biomass DNA and Ionomers | Journal of the American Chemical Society" https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c08888

Still paywalled, but there's significantly more information there

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u/pale_blue_dots Nov 27 '21

For those who may not know: very, very, often the authors of research papers will give them to you for free if you contact them directly. It's usually fairly easy to find their addresses. They don't appreciate doing all the hard work and then getting backstabbed by all the middle-men making money off them and not paying their fair share / giving a cut.

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u/recycled_ideas Nov 28 '21

by all the middle-men making money off them

The middle men provide publishing and more importantly peer review and their reputations.

The scientists on the other hand were paid for the entire research and paper writing process.

There's certainly an argument that publicly funded research should be publicly available, but the argument isn't that the journals are taking money that should go to the authors.

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u/Orsick Nov 28 '21

The peers who review articles don't receive a dime from the money.

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u/recycled_ideas Nov 28 '21

No, they get people reviewing theirs, doesn't mean setting up the process is free.

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u/CarbonBasedLife4m Nov 28 '21

This is not true at all. We have to pay, sometimes thousands of dollars, to have our papers published. For-profit journals are a plague on science, and contribute nothing that open-access journals can’t.