Biodegrading Plastic Maria João Ramos mjramos@fc.up.pt LAQV/REQUIMTE, Departamento de Química e Bioquímica, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, s/n, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal. Plastics have become essential to modern society, driven by their amazing versatility coupled with low production costs. However, due to their resistance to natural degradation, the long lifespan of plastics represents a global environmental problem, posing a serious and growing risk to flora and fauna, and even more so to marine ecosystems. The fact that our current recycling efforts still lack sustainability is also a problem. Fortunately, as a possible response to the accumulation of plastics in the biosphere, microbes are adapting to this situation by developing enzymes and catabolic pathways capable of partially degrading man-made plastics. Recently, the bacterial strain Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 was shown to be able to grow on low-crystallinity films of polyethylene terephtha...