Plastic-Eating Worms
吃塑料的虫子

Humans produce more than 300 million tons of plastic every year. Almost half of that winds up in landfills(垃圾填埋场), and up to 12 million tons pollute the oceans. So far there is no effective way to get rid of it, but a new study suggests an answer may lie in the stomachs of some hungry worms.
人类每年产生超过3亿吨塑料。其中近一半最终进入垃圾填埋场，高达1200万吨污染了海洋。到目前为止，还没有有效的方法来处理它，但一项新研究表明，答案可能在于一些饥饿的虫子的胃里。

Researchers in Spain and England recently found that the worms of the greater wax moth can break down polyethylene, which accounts for 40% of plastics. The team left 100 wax worms on a commercial polyethylene shopping bag for 12 hours, and the worms consumed and broke down about 92 milligrams, or almost 3% of it. To confirm that the worms’ chewing alone was not responsible for the polyethylene breakdown, the researchers made some worms into paste(糊状物) and applied it to plastic films. 14 hours later the films had lost 13% of their mass — apparently broken down by enzymes (酶) from the worms’ stomachs. Their findings were published in Current Biology in 2017.
西班牙和英国的研究人员最近发现，大蜡蛾的幼虫能够分解聚乙烯，聚乙烯占塑料总量的40%。研究团队将100只蜡蛾幼虫放在一个商用聚乙烯购物袋上12小时，这些虫子消耗并分解了大约92毫克，或者说近3%的塑料。为了确认塑料分解不仅仅是虫子咀嚼的结果，研究人员将一些虫子制成糊状物并涂抹在塑料薄膜上。14小时后，这些薄膜的质量减少了13%——显然是被虫子胃中的酶分解了。他们的发现在2017年的《当前生物学》上发表。

Federica Bertocchini, co-author of the study, says the worms’ ability to break down their everyday food — beeswax — also allows them to break down plastic. ＂Wax is a complex mixture, but the basic bond in polyethylene, the carbon-carbon bond, is there as well, ＂she explains, ＂The wax worm evolved a method or system to break this bond. ＂
该研究的共同作者费德里卡·贝尔托基尼表示，这些虫子分解它们日常食物——蜂蜡的能力，也使它们能够分解塑料。“蜡是一种复杂的混合物，但在聚乙烯中的基本键——碳-碳键也存在，”她解释说，“蜡蛾进化出了一种方法或系统来打破这个键。”

Jennifer DeBruyn, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study, says it is not surprising that such worms can break down polyethylene. But compared with previous studies, she finds the speed of breaking down in this one exciting. The next step, DeBruyn says, will be to identify the cause of the breakdown. Is it an enzyme produced by the worm itself or by its gut microbes(肠道微生物)?
田纳西大学的微生物学家詹妮弗·德布鲁因没有参与这项研究，她说这种虫子能够分解聚乙烯并不奇怪。但与之前的研究相比，她发现这项研究中的分解速度令人兴奋。德布鲁因说，下一步将是确定分解的原因。是虫子自身产生的酶还是其肠道微生物产生的？

Bertocchini agrees and hopes her team’s findings might one day help employ the enzyme to break down plastics in landfills. But she expects using the chemical in some kind of industrial process — not simply ＂millions of worms thrown on top of the plastic.＂
贝尔托基尼同意，并希望她的团队的发现有朝一日能够帮助利用这种酶在垃圾填埋场分解塑料。但她预计会使用这种化学物质进行某种工业过程——而不是简单地“把数百万只虫子扔在塑料上面。”

1. What can we learn about the worms in the study?
   A. They take plastics as their everyday food.
   B. They are newly evolved creatures.
   C. They can consume plastics.
   D. They wind up in landfills.
   答案：C

2. According to Jennifer DeBruyn, the next step of the study is to .
   A. identify other means of the breakdown
   B. find out the source of the enzyme
   C. confirm the research findings
   D. increase the breakdown speed
   答案：B

3. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that the chemical might .
   A. help to raise worms
   B. help make plastic bags
   C. be used to clean the oceans
   D. be produced in factories in future
   答案：D

4. What is the main purpose of the passage?
   A. To explain a study method on worms.
   B. To introduce the diet of a special worm.
   C. To present a way to break down plastics.
   D. To propose new means to keep eco-balance.
   答案：C