Nylon-eating bacteria

Nylon-eating bacteria
Scientific classification
Domain: Bacteria
Kingdom: Bacillati
Phylum: Actinomycetota
Class: Actinomycetia
Order: Micrococcales
Family: Micrococcaceae
Genus: Paenarthrobacter
Species:
Variety:
P. u. var. KI72
Trinomial name
Paenarthrobacter ureafaciens var. KI72
GTDB r95 & NCBI, 2020 (Busse HJ, 2016)
Synonyms
  • Arthrobacter sp. KI72
    Takehara I, 2017
  • Flavobacterium sp. KI72
    Negoro S, 1980
  • Achromobacter guttatus KI72
    Kinoshita S, 1975

(Due to an OCR error, the strain name has occasionally been reported as "K172".)

Paenarthrobacter ureafaciens KI72, popularly known as nylon-eating bacteria, is a strain of Paenarthrobacter ureafaciens that can digest certain by-products of nylon 6 manufacture. It uses a set of enzymes to digest nylon, popularly known as nylonase.