Debroas Didier, Mone Anne, Ter Halle Alexandra, Plastics in the North
Atlantic garbage patch: A boat-microbe for hitchhikers and plastic
degraders, Science of The Total Environment, Volumes 599?600, 1 December
2017, Pages 1222-1232, ISSN 0048-9697,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.059.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969717311579)Abstract
Plastic is a broad name given to different polymers with high molecular
weight that impact wildlife. Their fragmentation leads to a continuum of
debris sizes (meso to microplastics) entrapped in gyres and colonized by
microorganisms. In the present work, the structure of eukaryotes,
bacteria and Archaea was studied by a metabarcoding approach, and
statistical analysis associated with network building was used to define
a core microbiome at the plastic surface. Most of the bacteria
significantly associated with the plastic waste originated from
non-marine ecosystems, and numerous species can be considered as
hitchhikers, whereas others act as keystone species (e.g., Rhodobacterales, Rhizobiales, Streptomycetales and Cyanobacteria) in the biofilm. The chemical analysis provides evidence for a specific
colonization of the polymers. Alphaproteobacteria and
Gammaproteobacteria significantly dominated mesoplastics consisting of
poly(ethylene terephthalate) and polystyrene. Polyethylene was also
dominated by these bacterial classes and Actinobacteria. Microplastics
were made of polyethylene but differed in their crystallinity, and the
majorities were colonized by Betaproteobacteria. Our study indicated
that the bacteria inhabiting plastics harboured distinct metabolisms
from those present in the surrounding water. For instance, the metabolic
pathway involved in xenobiotic degradation was overrepresented on the
plastic surface.
Keywords: meso and micro-plastics; Microbial populations; Metabarcoding;
Metabolic pathways; North Atlantic gyre