Coexistence of specialist and generalist species within mixed plastic derivative-utilizing microbial communities

Microbiome

Research

Isaac Bigcraft¹  Emma Byrne¹  Lindsay Putman¹  Stephen Techtmann¹  Laura Schaerer¹  Rebecca Ong²  David Shonnard²  Sulihat Aloba²  Daniel Kulas²  Ali Zolghadr² 

[1] Department of Biological Sciences, Michigan Technological University, 740 Dow ESE Building, 1400 Townsend Drive, 49931, Houghton, MI, USA;Department of Chemical Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA;

关键词: Polyethylene terephthalate;    Upcycling;    Biodegradation;    Microbial community;    Ecological interactions;    Microbial community;    Plastic upcycling;    Specialist;    Generalist;    Biotechnology;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s40168-023-01645-4

 received in 2023-03-22, accepted in 2023-08-09,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPlastic-degrading microbial isolates offer great potential to degrade, transform, and upcycle plastic waste. Tandem chemical and biological processing of plastic wastes has been shown to substantially increase the rates of plastic degradation; however, the focus of this work has been almost entirely on microbial isolates (either bioengineered or naturally occurring). We propose that a microbial community has even greater potential for plastic upcycling. A microbial community has greater metabolic diversity to process mixed plastic waste streams and has built-in functional redundancy for optimal resilience.ResultsHere, we used two plastic-derivative degrading communities as a model system to investigate the roles of specialist and generalist species within the microbial communities. These communities were grown on five plastic-derived substrates: pyrolysis treated high-density polyethylene, chemically deconstructed polyethylene terephthalate, disodium terephthalate, terephthalamide, and ethylene glycol. Short-read metagenomic and metatranscriptomic sequencing were performed to evaluate activity of microorganisms in each treatment. Long-read metagenomic sequencing was performed to obtain high-quality metagenome assembled genomes and evaluate division of labor.ConclusionsData presented here show that the communities are primarily dominated by Rhodococcus generalists and lower abundance specialists for each of the plastic-derived substrates investigated here, supporting previous research that generalist species dominate batch culture. Additionally, division of labor may be present between Hydrogenophaga terephthalate degrading specialists and lower abundance protocatechuate degrading specialists.CMb_gViqtb7nKA_3vS-tKdVideo Abstract

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023

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