Biodiversity of Microorganisms Colonizing the Surface of Polystyrene Samples Exposed to Different Aqueous Environments

• Main Authors: Tatyana Tourova, Diyana Sokolova, Tamara Nazina, Denis Grouzdev, Eugeni Kurshev, Anatoly Laptev
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: polystyrene; microbial community; high-throughput sequencing; the 16S rRNA gene; biodegradation; the sty-operon
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/9/3624

The contamination of marine and freshwater ecosystems with the items from thermoplastics, including polystyrene (PS), necessitates the search for efficient microbial degraders of these polymers. In the present study, the composition of prokaryotes in biofilms formed on PS samples incubated in seawater and the industrial water of a petrochemical plant were investigated. Using a high-throughput sequencing of the V3–V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene, the predominance of Alphaproteobacteria (Blastomonas), Bacteroidetes (Chryseolinea), and <i>Gammaproteobacteria</i> (<i>Arenimonas</i> and Pseudomonas) in the biofilms on PS samples exposed to industrial water was revealed. <i>Alphaproteobacteria</i> (<i>Erythrobacter</i>) predominated on seawater-incubated PS samples. The local degradation of the PS samples was confirmed by scanning microscopy. The PS-colonizing microbial communities in industrial water differed significantly from the PS communities in seawater. Both communities have a high potential ability to carry out the carbohydrates and amino acids metabolism, but the potential for xenobiotic degradation, including styrene degradation, was relatively higher in the biofilms in industrial water. Bacteria of the genera <i>Erythrobacter</i>, <i>Maribacter</i>, and <i>Mycobacterium</i> were potential styrene-degraders in seawater, and <i>Pseudomonas</i> and <i>Arenimonas</i> in industrial water. Our results suggest that marine and industrial waters contain microbial populations potentially capable of degrading PS, and these populations may be used for the isolation of efficient PS degraders.