The DOI matches its Crossref record; 6 of the 6 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Biodegradation and Mineralization of Polystyrene by Plastic-Eating Mealworms: Part 1. Chemical and Physical Characterization and Isotopic Tests
Abstract
Polystyrene (PS) is generally considered to be durable and resistant to biodegradation. Mealworms (the larvae of Tenebrio molitor Linnaeus) from different sources chew and eat Styrofoam, a common PS product. The Styrofoam was efficiently degraded in the larval gut within a retention time of less than 24 h. Fed with Styrofoam as the sole diet, the larvae lived as well as those fed with a normal diet (bran) over a period of 1 month. The analysis of fecula egested from Styrofoam-feeding larvae, using gel permeation chromatography (GPC), solid-state (13)C cross-polarization/magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (CP/MAS NMR) spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric Fourier transform infrared (TG-FTIR) spectroscopy, substantiated that cleavage/depolymerization of long-chain PS molecules and the formation of depolymerized metabolites occurred in the larval gut. Within a 16 day test period, 47.7% of the ingested Styrofoam carbon was converted into CO2 and the residue (ca. 49.2%) was egested as fecula with a limited fraction incorporated into biomass (ca. 0.5%). Tests with α (13)C- or β (13)C-labeled PS confirmed that the (13)C-labeled PS was mineralized to (13)CO2 and incorporated into lipids. The discovery of the rapid biodegradation of PS in the larval gut reveals a new fate for plastic waste in the environment.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Accumulation and fragmentation of plastic debris in global environments
Barnes, D. K. A., Galgani, F., Thompson, R. C., & Barlaz, M. (2009) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0205 · Cited by 6,126
Plastic debris in the open ocean
Cózar, A., Echevarría, F., González-Gordillo, J. I., Irigoien, X., Úbeda, B., Hernández-León, S., Palma, Á. T., Navarro, S., García-de-Lomas, J., Ruiz, A., et al. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1314705111 · Cited by 3,133
Plastic accumulation in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre
Law, K. L., Morét-Ferguson, S., Maximenko, N. A., Proskurowski, G., Peacock, E. E., Hafner, J., & Reddy, C. M. (2010) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1192321 · Cited by 1,377
Otake, Y., Kobayashi, T., Asabe, H., Murakami, N., & Ono, K. (1995) · Journal of Applied Polymer Science · doi:10.1002/app.1995.070561309 · Cited by 307
Guillet, J. E., Regulski, T. W., & McAneney, T. B. (1974) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es60095a011 · Cited by 79
Microbial degradation of [14C]polystyrene and 1,3-diphenylbutane
Sielicki, M., Focht, D. D., & Martin, J. P. (1978) · Canadian Journal of Microbiology · doi:10.1139/m78-134 · Cited by 60
Cited by
Horton, A. A., Walton, A., Spurgeon, D. J., Lahive, E., & Svendsen, C. (2017) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.01.190 · Cited by 3,756
Chemical recycling of waste plastics for new materials production
Rahimi, A., & García, J. M. (2017) · Nature Reviews Chemistry · doi:10.1038/s41570-017-0046 · Cited by 2,121
Source, migration and toxicology of microplastics in soil
Guo, J.-J., Huang, X.-P., Xiang, L., Wang, Y.-Z., Li, Y.-W., Li, H., Cai, Q.-Y., Mo, C.-H., & Wong, M.-H. (2020) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2019.105263 · Cited by 1,211
Microbial and Enzymatic Degradation of Synthetic Plastics
Mohanan, N., Montazer, Z., Sharma, P. K., & Levin, D. B. (2020) · Frontiers in Microbiology · doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.580709 · Cited by 1,122
The world of plastic waste: A review
Nayanathara Thathsarani Pilapitiya, P. G. C., & Ratnayake, A. S. (2024) · Cleaner Materials · doi:10.1016/j.clema.2024.100220 · Cited by 1,034
Metadata
- Authors
- Yang, Y., Yang, J., Wu, W.-M., Zhao, J., Song, Y., Gao, L., Yang, R., & Jiang, L.
- Venue
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2015-10-01
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 20
- Pages
- 12080-12086
- ISSN
- 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
- 1520-5851
- OpenAlex
- W2221884017
- Cited by
- 720
- References
- 6
- FWCI
- 10.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Biodegradation and Mineralization of Polystyrene by Plastic-Eating Mealworms: Part 1. Chemical and Physical Characterization and Isotopic Tests. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1021/acs.est.5b02661
- The paper
- Yang, Y., Yang, J., Wu, W.-M., Zhao, J., Song, Y., Gao, L., Yang, R., & Jiang, L. (2015). Biodegradation and Mineralization of Polystyrene by Plastic-Eating Mealworms: Part 1. Chemical and Physical Characterization and Isotopic Tests. Environmental Science & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5b02661
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
