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      Discovery of plastic-degrading microbial strains isolated from the alpine and Arctic terrestrial plastisphere

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          Abstract

          Increasing plastic production and the release of some plastic in to the environment highlight the need for circular plastic economy. Microorganisms have a great potential to enable a more sustainable plastic economy by biodegradation and enzymatic recycling of polymers. Temperature is a crucial parameter affecting biodegradation rates, but so far microbial plastic degradation has mostly been studied at temperatures above 20°C. Here, we isolated 34 cold-adapted microbial strains from the plastisphere using plastics buried in alpine and Arctic soils during laboratory incubations as well as plastics collected directly from Arctic terrestrial environments. We tested their ability to degrade, at 15°C, conventional polyethylene (PE) and the biodegradable plastics polyester-polyurethane (PUR; Impranil ®); ecovio ® and BI-OPL, two commercial plastic films made of polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PBAT) and polylactic acid (PLA); pure PBAT; and pure PLA. Agar clearing tests indicated that 19 strains had the ability to degrade the dispersed PUR. Weight-loss analysis showed degradation of the polyester plastic films ecovio ® and BI-OPL by 12 and 5 strains, respectively, whereas no strain was able to break down PE. NMR analysis revealed significant mass reduction of the PBAT and PLA components in the biodegradable plastic films by 8 and 7 strains, respectively. Co-hydrolysis experiments with a polymer-embedded fluorogenic probe revealed the potential of many strains to depolymerize PBAT. Neodevriesia and Lachnellula strains were able to degrade all the tested biodegradable plastic materials, making these strains especially promising for future applications. Further, the composition of the culturing medium strongly affected the microbial plastic degradation, with different strains having different optimal conditions. In our study we discovered many novel microbial taxa with the ability to break down biodegradable plastic films, dispersed PUR, and PBAT, providing a strong foundation to underline the role of biodegradable polymers in a circular plastic economy.

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            ape 5.0: an environment for modern phylogenetics and evolutionary analyses in R

            After more than fifteen years of existence, the R package ape has continuously grown its contents, and has been used by a growing community of users. The release of version 5.0 has marked a leap towards a modern software for evolutionary analyses. Efforts have been put to improve efficiency, flexibility, support for 'big data' (R's long vectors), ease of use and quality check before a new release. These changes will hopefully make ape a useful software for the study of biodiversity and evolution in a context of increasing data quantity.
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              Life in the "plastisphere": microbial communities on plastic marine debris.

              Plastics are the most abundant form of marine debris, with global production rising and documented impacts in some marine environments, but the influence of plastic on open ocean ecosystems is poorly understood, particularly for microbial communities. Plastic marine debris (PMD) collected at multiple locations in the North Atlantic was analyzed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and next-generation sequencing to characterize the attached microbial communities. We unveiled a diverse microbial community of heterotrophs, autotrophs, predators, and symbionts, a community we refer to as the "Plastisphere". Pits visualized in the PMD surface conformed to bacterial shapes suggesting active hydrolysis of the hydrocarbon polymer. Small-subunit rRNA gene surveys identified several hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria, supporting the possibility that microbes play a role in degrading PMD. Some Plastisphere members may be opportunistic pathogens (the authors, unpublished data) such as specific members of the genus Vibrio that dominated one of our plastic samples. Plastisphere communities are distinct from surrounding surface water, implying that plastic serves as a novel ecological habitat in the open ocean. Plastic has a longer half-life than most natural floating marine substrates, and a hydrophobic surface that promotes microbial colonization and biofilm formation, differing from autochthonous substrates in the upper layers of the ocean.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Microbiol
                Front Microbiol
                Front. Microbiol.
                Frontiers in Microbiology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-302X
                10 May 2023
                2023
                : 14
                : 1178474
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL , Birmensdorf, Switzerland
                [2] 2Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH , Zurich, Switzerland
                Author notes

                Edited by: Cristiano Varrone, Aalborg University, Denmark

                Reviewed by: Cinzia Pezzella, University of Naples Federico II, Italy; Doris Ribitsch, Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB), Austria

                *Correspondence: Beat Frey, beat.frey@ 123456wsl.ch
                Article
                10.3389/fmicb.2023.1178474
                10206078
                37234546
                115ba555-dca3-43a0-b468-d180afd7e13a
                Copyright © 2023 Rüthi, Cerri, Brunner, Stierli, Sander and Frey.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 02 March 2023
                : 06 April 2023
                Page count
                Figures: 6, Tables: 1, Equations: 2, References: 94, Pages: 16, Words: 13983
                Categories
                Microbiology
                Original Research

                Microbiology & Virology
                alpine,arctic,biodegradable plastic,cold-adapted microorganism,microbial strain,plastic degradation

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