Plastics are ubiquitous and problematic pollutants of ecosystems globally. When released into the environment plastics become rapidly colonised by microbes – the “plastisphere”. This microbial community has sparked a multitude of scientific enquiries and many suggestions have been made about the role that these biofilms may play in the transportation and ecological impact of these plastics. The Plastisphere is at the interface between the plastic and its surrounding milieu, and thus drives every interaction that this synthetic material has with its environment, from ecotoxicity and new links in marine food webs to the fate of the plastics in the water column. Through carrying out a meta-analysis of plastisphere studies we showed that random forest models can be trained to differentiate between groupings of environmental factors as well as aspects of study design, but – crucially – also between plastics when compared with control biofilms and between different plastic types and community successional stages. The meta-analysis confirmed that potentially biodegrading plastisphere members, the hydrocarbonoclastic Oceanospirillales and Alteromonadales are consistently more abundant in plastic than control biofilm samples across multiple studies and environments. However, the amplicon sequencing used by these studies does not provide the resolution to determine the biodegrading ability of these microbes and the high average incubation time of these samples (100 days) leaves us with little information about early successional stages. Here, we will discuss the results obtained from an analysis of microbial community succession across six weeks of incubation with different polyethylene terephthalate (PET) products as the sole carbon source and the further characterisation of the mechanisms involved and enzymes used for PET degradation by two bacterial isolated from the plastisphere.

Food or a just free ride? Elucidating the role of the plastisphere in marine plastic degradation

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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