Bacteria Turn Toxins Into Plastic

From Wired News:

This week, scientists Kevin O'Connor and Patrick Ward, of the Department of Industrial Microbiology at University College Dublin, announced that they have discovered a bacterial strain that uses styrene, a toxic byproduct of the polystyrene industry (which produces Styrofoam, among other things), as fuel to make a type of biodegradable plastic, polyhydroxyalkanoate, known as PHA.

Hmm. I wonder what other things bacteria could be trained to eat... maybe Karl Rove's brain? Seriously, this is a great thing. I hope they're succesful in applying it to real-world situations.