Project description:Biodegradable plastics are one possible solution for reducing plastic waste, yet the mechanisms and organisms involved in their degradation in the aquatic environment remain understudied. In this study, we have enriched a microbial community from North Sea water and sediment, capable of growing on the polyester poly(butylene succinate). This culture was grown on two other biodegradable polyesters, polycaprolactone and ecovio® FT (a PBAT-based blended biodegradable plastic), and the differences between community structure and activity on these three polymers were determined by metagenomics and metaproteomics. We have seen that the plastic supplied drives the community structure and activity. Setups growing on ecovio® FT were more diverse, yet showed the lowest degradation, while poly(butylene succinate) and polycaprolactone resulted in a less diverse community but much higher degradation efficiencies. The dominating species were Alcanivorax sp., Thalassobius sp., or Pseudomonas sp., depending on the polymer supplied. Furthermore, we have observed that Gammaproteobacteria were more abundant and active within the biofilm and Alphaproteobacteria within the free-living fraction of the enrichments. Two of the three PETase-like enzymes isolated were expressed as tandems (Ple -tan1 &Ple – tan2) and all three were produced by Pseudomonas sp. Of those, Ple-tan1 was most active on all three substrates and also the most thermostable. Overall, we could show that all three plastics investigated can be mineralized by bacteria naturally occurring within the marine environment and characterize some of the enzymes involved in the degradation process.
Project description:Although the biodegradation of biodegradable plastics in soil and compost is well-studied, there is little knowledge on the metabolic mechanisms of synthetic polymers degradation by marine microorganisms. Here, we present a multiomics study to elucidate the biodegradation mechanism of a commercial aromatic-aliphatic copolyester film by a marine microbial enrichment culture. The plastic film and each monomer can be used as sole carbon source. Our analysis showed that the consortium synergistically degrades the polymer, different degradation steps being performed by different members of the community. Analysis of gene expression and translation profiles revealed that the relevant degradation processes in the marine consortium are closely related to poly(ethylene terephthalate) biodegradation from terrestrial microbes. Although there are multiple genes and organisms with the potential to perform a degradation step, only a few of these are active during biodegradation. Our results elucidate the potential of marine microorganisms to mineralize biodegradable plastic polymers and describe the mechanisms of labor division within the community to get maximum energetic yield from a complex synthetic substrate.
2020-09-25 | PXD018391 | Pride
Project description:Plastic degradation potential of marine microorganisms
Project description:Plastic associated Fungi show shared and unique taxa between the surface waters of the Western South Atlantic and the Antarctic Peninsula.
Project description:Since the invention over a hundred years ago, plastics have been used in many applications, and they are involved in every aspect of our lives. The extensive usage of plastics results in a tremendous amount of waste, which has become a severe burden on the environment. Several degradation approaches exist in nature to cope with ever-increasing plastic waste. Among these approaches, biodegradation by microorganisms has emerged as a natural way, which is favored by many environmentally conscious societies. To facilitate the study on biodegradation of plastics, we developed an online resource, Plastics Microbial Biodegradation Database (PMBD), to gather and present the information about microbial biodegradation of plastics. In this database, 949 microorganisms-plastics relationships and 79 genes involved in the biodegradation of plastics were manually collected and confirmed through literature searching. In addition, more than 8000 automatically annotated enzyme sequences, which were predicted to be involved in the plastics biodegradation, were extracted from the TrEMBL section of the UniProt database. The PMBD database is presented with a website at http://pmbd.genome-mining.cn/home. Data may be accessed through browsing or searching. Also included on the website are a sequence alignment tool and a function prediction tool.
Project description:Integrated assessment models (IAM) study the interlinkages between human and natural systems and play a key role in assessing global strategies to reduce global warming. However, they largely neglect the role of materials and the circular economy. With the Plastics Integrated Assessment model (PLAIA), we included plastic production, use, and end-of-life in the IAM IMAGE. PLAIA models the global plastics sector and its impacts up to 2100 for 26 world regions, providing a long-term, dynamic perspective of the sector and its interactions with other socioeconomic and natural systems. This article summarizes the model structure, mathematical formulation, assumptions, and data sources. The model links the upstream chemical production with the downstream production of plastics, their use in different sectors, and their end of life. Therefore, PLAIA can assess material use and emission mitigation strategies throughout the whole life cycle in an IAM, including the impacts of the circular economy on mitigating climate change. PLAIA projects plastics demand, production pathways and specifies the annual plastic waste generation, collection, and the impact of waste management strategies. It shows the fossil and bio-based energy and carbon flows in product stocks, landfills, and the emissions in production and at the end of life.•We included plastics production, use, and waste management into an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM).•Our model PLAIA provides a long-term, dynamic perspective of the global plastics sector until 2100 and its interactions with other sectors and the environment.•PLAIA can assess the impact of material use and emission mitigation strategies throughout the whole life cycle of plastics.
Project description:Microorganisms constitute a reservoir of enzymes involved in environmental carbon cycling and degradation of plant polysaccharides since they produce a vast variety of glycoside hydrolases. The CAZyChip was developed to allow a rapid characterization at transcriptomic level of these GHs and to identify enzymes acting on hydrolysis of polysaccharide or glycans. This DNA biochip contains the signature of 55,220 bacterial GHs available in the CAZy database. Probes were designed using two softwares and microarrays were directly synthetized using the in situ ink-jet technology. CAZyChip specificity and reproducibility was validated by hybridization of known GHs RNA extracted from recombinant E. coli strains, previously characterized by a functional metagenomic approach. The GHs arsenal was also studied in bioprocess conditions using rumen derived microbiota. The CAZyChip appears to be a user friendly tool for profiling the expression of a large variety of GHs. It can be used to study temporal variations of functional diversity, thereby facilitating the identification of new efficient candidates for enzymatic conversions from various ecosystems.
Project description:Environmental compounds are known to promote epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease in subsequent generations (F1M-bM-^@M-^SF3) following ancestral exposure during fetal gonadal sex determination. The current study was designed to determine if a mixture of plastic derived endocrine disruptor compounds bisphenol-A (BPA), bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) at two different doses promoted epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease and associated DNA methylation epimutations in sperm. Gestating F0 generation females were exposed to either the M-bM-^@M-^\plasticsM-bM-^@M-^] or M-bM-^@M-^\lower dose plasticsM-bM-^@M-^] mixture during embryonic days 8 to 14 of gonadal sex determination and the incidence of adult onset disease was evaluated in F1 and F3 generation rats. There were significant increases in the incidence of total disease/abnormalities in F1 and F3 generation male and female animals from plastics lineages. Pubertal abnormalities, testis disease, obesity, and ovarian disease (primary ovarian insufficiency and polycystic ovaries) were increased in the F3 generation animals. Kidney and prostate disease were only observed in the direct fetally exposed F1 generation plastic lineage animals. Analysis of the plastics lineage F3 generation sperm epigenome previously identified 197 differential DNA methylation regions (DMR) in gene promoters, termed epimutations. A number of these transgenerational DMR form a unique direct connection gene network and have previously been shown to correlate with the pathologies identified. Observations demonstrate that a mixture of plastic derived compounds, BPA and phthalates, can promote epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease. The sperm DMR provide potential epigenetic biomarkers for transgenerational disease and/or ancestral environmental exposures. Methylated sperm DNA was isolated from rats ancestrally exposed to plastics (Bip). Three independent samples from the treatment group were obtained. Differential DNA methylation between treatment groups was determined using Nimblegen microarrays. Treated samples were paired with control samples and hybridized together on arrays (Bip1/Cip1, Bip2/Cip2, and Bip3/Cip3), resulting in three arrays for the treatment.