← Back to context

Comment by ahazred8ta

1 month ago

There have been several bacteria-eats-stuff novels. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/260552/novel-that-...

This was the basis for Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters (1971 novel), which was adapted from an episode of Doomwatch (1970 UK TV), which was inspired by the fighter jet crash scene in The Andromeda Strain (1969 novel), where the organism ate through a plastic hose. There was another UK show where a fungus destroyed all the paper.

In the present article, the problem is that dissolvable sutures are made out of biodegradable polycaprolactone, and there's a Pseudomonas biofilm that can grow on polycaprolactone, so it's an infection problem.