Wastewater Metagenome. Wastewater

This research aimed to characterize the microbial community from biofouled microplastics (MPs), loaded and non-loaded with triclosan (TCS). To achieve this goal, polyethylene MPs (PE-MPs) were exposed to the influent and the effluent from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) close to Madrid (Spain) to promote biofouling. The biofouling time frame was four weeks. The resulting biofouled-MPs were put in contact with TCS for four h. Complementarily, samples from wastewater at the beginning and the end of the biofouling period were collected to evaluate possible differences between microbial communities attached to MPs and the free-living organisms in the surrounding media. We applied Illumina sequencing of the V3 and V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene.