Plastic pollution, a major environmental crisis, has a variety of consequences for various organisms with aquatic systems, and further, it has the potential to absorb biological toxins and invasive microbial species. To better understand the capability of environmental plastic debris to absorb these species, we investigated the binding of model soft (bovine serum album – BSA) and hard (yellow fluorescent protein, mVenus) proteins to polyethylene thin films at various stages of photodegradation. Circular dichroism studies revealed that “soft” proteins undergo structural rearrangement,  accommodating interactions dependent on the polymer’s changing physical (surface crystallinity) and chemical structure (surface chemistry moieties) that occur on the polymer as the result of photodegradation. “Hard” proteins retain their overall structure with no global response to the state of polymer photodegradation; yet, fluorescence studies reveal that the beta-barrel changes its orientation (upright or on its side) as more photodegradation increases hydrophilicity of the polymer. To relate the binding of proteins to whole organisms, we studied biofilm formation of model bacteria <i>Shewanella </i>oneidensis. Interesting, biofilms preferentially formed on the photodegraded polyethylene that correlated with state of weathering that had the most significant binding of BSA. Taken together, our work suggests there are optimal physical and chemical properties of photodegraded polymers that predict which plastic debris will carry biochemical or microbial hitchhikers.

Proteins change their structure upon binding to weathered plastic debris predicting biofilm formation

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