Polyurethane Eating Fungus

The Yale Alumni Magazine posted an interesting article on fungus, found in the Ecuadorian rainforest,  that can live on polyurethane alone.  From the Yale Findings:

"At Yale, Pria Anand ’10, an alumna of the course, isolated P. microspora samples and showed that they could do something no one had seen: live and prosper on a steady diet of polyurethane alone. Most intriguing, the fungus is believed to do this even under the oxygen-free conditions that would prevail at the bottom of a landfill. Russell has isolated an enzyme the fungi use to accomplish the degradation, and it’s possible that this molecule alone could be useful in eliminating polyurethane."

Check out the full article at http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2011_11/findings_fungus.html.

So cool!