"Plastics, including plastic surfaces, could potentially be food for these bacteria. Pathogens with this ability could survive for longer in the hospital environment. It also means that any ...

Get Instant Summarized Text (Gist) Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a hospital superbug, can degrade polycaprolactone (PCL), a plastic used in medical devices, using the enzyme Pap1. This ability enables ...

McCarthy said the findings mean that we need to reconsider how pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa exist in hospital environments. "Plastics, including plastic surfaces, could potentially be ...

"Plastics, including plastic surfaces, could potentially be food for these bacteria," McCarthy said. "Pathogens with this ability could survive for longer in the hospital environment." The study ...

So might the bacteria found in hospitals break down and feed on plastic? To find out, we studied the genomes of known hospital pathogens (harmful bacteria) to see if they had the same plastic ...

Ronan McCarthy receives funding from the BBSRC, NC3Rs, Academy of Medical Sciences, Horizon 2020, British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Innovate UK, NERC and the Medical Research Council.