 K172, became popularly known as nylon-eating bacteria, and the enzymes used to digest the man-made molecules became popularly known as nylonase.In 1975, a team of Japanese scientists discovered a strain of "Flavobacterium", living in ponds containing waste water from a nylon factory, that could digest certain byproducts of nylon 6 manufacture, such as the linear dimer of 6-aminohexanoate.These substances are not known to have existed before the invention of nylon in 1935.