Plastic-Degrading Potential across the Global Microbiome Correlates with Recent Pollution Trends.

ABSTRACT: Biodegradation is a plausible route toward sustainable management of the millions of tons of plastic waste that have accumulated in terrestrial and marine environments. However, the global diversity of plastic-degrading enzymes remains poorly understood. Taking advantage of global environmental DNA sampling projects, here we constructed hidden Markov models from experimentally verified enzymes and mined ocean and soil metagenomes to assess the global potential of microorganisms to degrade plastics. By controlling for false positives using gut microbiome data, we compiled a catalogue of over 30,000 nonredundant enzyme homologues with the potential to degrade 10 different plastic types. While differences between the ocean and soil microbiomes likely reflect the base compositions of these env

SUBMITTER: Zrimec J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8546865 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature