A Hawaii Teen Found That Coconut Fungi Eats Plastic And Sunscreen And May Have Discovered A New Species
Vera Wang, a senior at Kaiser High School in East Honolulu, won multiple awards at the Hawaii State Science and Engineering Fair and qualified for the International Science and Engineering Fair in Arizona after a two-year research project that began as a question about ocean pollution and ended with a potential new species. Wang designed and built an ocean filter made entirely from coconut byproduct waste, inspired by traditional Polynesian weaving patterns, and demonstrated that the filter could remove sunscreen and microplastics from surface water in a scientifically effective and sustainable way. Then she asked the next question: what happens to the pollutants once they have been captured? The answer led her to Anthony Amend's lab at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she began studying the fungal communities living naturally within coconut husks to see whether those fungi could biodegrade, rather than simply capture, the pollutants she had been filtering out. She discovered they could. The fungi she identified were capable of decomposing both sunscreen compounds and plastic media, and a tannin compound found naturally in the coconut fibers appeared to encourage the growth of these complex degraders, potentially explaining why the husk environment is particularly suited to hosting them.
The most surprising part of the research emerged from genetic testing. Some of the fungal species Wang identified had no match in the world's largest reference database of known genes and genomes, suggesting they may be previously uncharacterized species, entirely unknown to science before a high school student in Hawaii went looking for something practical and found something fundamental. Wang worked closely with graduate student Kaylee Christensen throughout the project and received first place in the Microbiology category alongside a scholarship from the McInerny Foundation. Amend, whose lab hosted the work, said the project was made possible because of Wang's vision and that it gave him such optimism about the future of science in Hawaii, adding that her success was a testament to the public school system doing a wonderful job training the next generation. Wang, for her part, said the research had been part of a much longer journey and that having it recognized felt both surreal and deeply rewarding. She heads to Arizona for the international competition, where she will present findings that started with a coconut husk and ended with a potential new entry in the catalog of life on Earth.
