An experimental approach to understanding plastic leachate impacts on marine microorganisms

Plastics in the world's oceans are exposed to diverse environmental stressors that fragment them, accelerating the leaching of associated additives. The impact of micro-sized fragments and potentially toxic degradation products and additives on marine microorganisms remains poorly understood. We assessed plastic leachate impacts on an in vitro marine microbial community seeded from plastics-associated marine biofilms. Each replicate marine microbial community was exposed to one of four plastic leachates. These included linear low-density polyethylene, polyamide, polyethylene terephthalate, polylactic acid, or artificial seawater as a control treatment. Alongside community transcriptome sequencing, microbial community composition was also assessed by 16S rRNA and ITS gene region amplicon sequencing.