Early and differential bacterial colonization on microplastics deployed into the effluents of wastewater treatment plants

The designed study consisted of an in-situ colonization experiment where seven types of polymers (PLA, PHB, PCL, POM, PS, LDPE and PET) in the form of pellets and borosilicate spheres that were exposed for 48 hours in the effluent of two WWTPs of Spain. Corresponding water of each WWTP were sample to evaluate the free-living and attached to naturally particulate material. We applied Illumina sequencing of the V3 and V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene to analyse the different bacteria on MP and compare between them and respect with the water.