Nature's Work on Plastics Degradation

 Uronema africanum borge 

Uronema africanum borge, an filamentous micro algae has the ability to decompose low-density Polyethylene. On Primary Research from the sample taken in kallukuttai lake,Chennai,India, Professor E sanniyasi and his students discovered that this kind of algae had formed colonies and it had in the process of decomposing the Polyehtylene bag into simple monomers. Further Uronema africanum borge algae has firsts the race by initiating the decomposition of PE within 30 days of incubation when compared to others like Aspergillus niger (126 days), A clavatus (90 days), Azobacter sp.(45 days) etc.

Kingdom::	Plantae
Subkingdom::	Viridiplantae
Infrakingdom::	Chlorophyta infrakingdom
Phylum::	Chlorophyta
Subphylum::	Chlorophytina
Class::	Chlorophyceae
Order::	Chaetophorales
Family::	Uronemataceae
Genus::	Uronema
Species::	africanum Borge

Credits to : 

Elumalai Sanniyasi, 

Rajesh Kanna Gopal, 

Dinesh Kumar Gunasekar & 

Preethy P. Raj

Click here to see the research paper