Articles for tag: Biodegradable, bioengineering, Green Technology, Mushroom, Sustainable Materials

Mushroom

Can Mushrooms Really Replace Plastic and Leather? The Answer Will Blow Your Mind

Suhail Ahmed

Imagine a time when mushrooms will make your shoes, handbag, even phone cover rather than synthetic plastics or animal hides. Though it sounds like science fiction, researchers at McMaster University have opened a radical new frontier in sustainable materials using an improbable hero: the modest split gill mushroom (Schizophyllum commune). Having more than 23,000 genetic ...

Is Your Catheter Safe? The Bacteria That’s Degrading Medical Plastic From the Inside Out

Jan Otte

Assuming these materials were inert and safe, hospitals have for decades depended on medical plastics used in everything from sutures to catheters. Unbelievably, though, some of the worst superbugs are eating rather than merely colonizing these devices. Researchers have found a strain of the well-known hospital pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa that generates an enzyme able to ...