Radical innovation breakthroughs of biodegradation of plastics by insects:history,present and future perspectives

Insects damaging and penetrating plastic packaged materials has been reported since the 1950s.Radical innovation breakthroughs of plastic biodegradation have been initiated since the discovery of biodegradation of plastics by Tenebrio molitor larvae in 2015 followed by Galleria mellonella in 2017.Here we review updated studies on the insect-mediated biodegradation of plastics.Plastic biodegradation by insect larvae,mainly by some species of darkling beetles(Tenebrionidae)and pyralid moths(Pyralidae)is currently a highly active and potentially transformative area of research.Over the past eight years,publications have increased explosively,including discoveries of the ability of different insect species to biodegrade plastics,biodegradation performance,and the contribution of host and microbiomes,impacts of polymer types and their physic-chemical properties,and responsible enzymes secreted by the host and gut microbes.To date,almost all major plastics including polyethylene(PE),polypropylene(PP),polyvinyl chloride(PVC),polyethylene terephthalate(PET),polyurethane(PUR),and polystyrene(PS)can be biodegraded by T.molitor and ten other insect species representing the Tenebrionidae and Pyralidae families.The biodegradation processes are symbiotic reactions or performed by synergistic efforts of both host and gut-microbes to rapidly depolymerize and biodegrade plastics with hourly half-lives.The digestive ezymens and bioreagents screted by the insects play an essential role in plasatic biodegradation in certain species of Tenebrionidae and Pyralidae families.New research on the insect itself,gut microbiomes,transcriptomes,proteomes and metabolomes has evaluated the mechanisms of plastic biodegradation in insects.We conclude this review by discussing future research perspectives on insect-mediated biodegradation of plastics.

Investigation of the relationship between mirror proton radii and neutron-skin thickness

Through systematic investigations using the axially deformed solutions of the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations with 132 sets of Skyrme interaction parameters,it is confirmed that the neutron-skin thickness(Sn)of a neutron-rich nucleus is proportional to the difference between the proton radii of mirror nuclei(R_(p)^(mir)).This indicates that Sn may be deduced from R_(p)^(mir).Compared with the results of the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock model,pairing effects are found to enhance the correlation for most mirror pairs,whereas deformation effects may weaken the correlation.Furthermore,the correlation between Sn and R_(p)^(mir) is studied for isotones with N=20 and N=28,which reveals a stronger linear correlation with increasing|N−Z|.This result demonstrates that it is possible to extract the neutron-skin thickness of an unstable nucleus from the proton radii difference of the mirror nuclei of its isotones.