Biodiversity of Microorganisms Colonizing the Surface of Polystyrene Samples Exposed to Different Aqueous Environments

Abstract

The contamination of marine and freshwater ecosystems with the items from thermoplastics, including polystyrene (PS), necessitates the search for efficient microbial degraders of these polymers. In the present study, the composition of prokaryotes in biofilms formed on PS samples incubated in seawater and the industrial water of a petrochemical plant were investigated. Using a high-throughput sequencing of the V3–V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene, the predominance of Alphaproteobacteria (Blastomonas), Bacteroidetes (Chryseolinea), and Gammaproteobacteria (Arenimonas and Pseudomonas) in the biofilms on PS samples exposed to industrial water was revealed. Alphaproteobacteria (Erythrobacter) predominated on seawater-incubated PS samples. The local degradation of the PS samples was confirmed by scanning microscopy. The PS-colonizing microbial communities in industrial water differed significantly from the PS communities in seawater. Both communities have a high potential ability to carry out the carbohydrates and amino acids metabolism, but the potential for xenobiotic degradation, including styrene degradation, was relatively higher in the biofilms in industrial water. Bacteria of the genera Erythrobacter, Maribacter, and Mycobacterium were potential styrene-degraders in seawater, and Pseudomonas and Arenimonas in industrial water. Our results suggest that marine and industrial waters contain microbial populations potentially capable of degrading PS, and these populations may be used for the isolation of efficient PS degraders.

Degradation of Poly(ε-caprolactone) by a Thermophilic Community and Brevibacillus thermoruber Strain 7 Isolated from Bulgarian Hot Spring

“…Its significant reduction from 81.2%, 7 phylogenetic groups in MKC-C to 3.7%, only one species in MKC-P resulted in flourishing of Meiothermus and Brevibacillus in MKC-P that suggested an active participation of these genera in the degradation process. Similar domination of polymer-active taxa in plastic containing samples has been reported for some marine communities [29,30]. Unfortunately, a comparison among the composition of thermophilic communities with and without plastic is not possible due to the lack of such information.…”

Amazonia Seasons Have an Influence in the Composition of Bacterial Gut Microbiota of Mangrove Oysters (Crassostrea gasar)

“…The metabolism of carbohydrates, fatty acids, amino acids and even antibiotic resistance genes were more abundant in the rainy season (Supplementary Figures 4, 5), when the bacterial microbiota was richer (Figure 2). The inference of metabolism based on 16S sequencing has already been used to compare the gut microbial communities of human populations living in urban and tribal areas (Singh et al, 2019), landfill sites with different characteristics (Thakur et al, 2020), and polystyrene-degrading biofilms cultivated under different conditions (Tourova et al, 2020).…”

Plastic Degradation by Extremophilic Bacteria

“…Comparison of the biological diversity in biofilms formed on PS samples incubated in Black Sea water at 10 °C and industrial water from a petrochemical plant revealed different community composition [ 70 ]. It was suggested that the significant difference in salinity may be reflected in the active growth of slight halophiles in sea water samples (1.86% salinity) and non-extremophiles in industrial water samples (~0.1% salinity).…”