Spatio-temporal succession of plastisphere communities and their potentials for plastic degradation in freshwater ecosystems

Plastics in the environment provide a new and unique habitat for microorganisms - known as the plastisphere. The capacity of bacterial succession within the plastisphere in biodegrading both non-biodegradable plastics and biodegradable plastics within freshwater ecosystems is still not clear enough to understand the underpinning mechanism. Here, we investigated plastisphere community composition variation and its capacity to biodegrade three types of plastics, i.e., polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) and polylactic acid+polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PLA+PBAT, BP blends herein) for four-time periods (15, 30, 45, and 80 days) in three freshwater systems. 112 samples were studies based on DNA extraction and 16S rRNA sequencing.

环境中的塑料为微生物提供了一种全新且独特的栖息环境——该环境被称为塑料圈（plastisphere）。目前学界仍未充分阐明淡水生态系统中塑料圈内的细菌群落演替对不可降解塑料与可降解塑料的降解能力，其背后的核心调控机制尚不明确。本研究针对三个淡水生态系统，设置15、30、45及80天四个采样时段，探究了塑料圈的群落组成变化及其对三类塑料的降解能力，这三类塑料分别为聚丙烯（PP）、聚乙烯（PE）以及聚乳酸-聚己二酸丁二醇酯-对苯二甲酸丁二醇酯（PLA+PBAT，本文中简称BP共混物）。本研究通过DNA提取与16S rRNA测序技术，对112份样本展开了分析。