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Uniqueness and Dependence of Bacterial Communities on Microplastics: Comparison with Water, Sediment, and Soil

  • Microbiology of Aquatic Systems
  • Published:
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Abstract

Revealing the dependence and uniqueness of microbial communities on microplastics could help us better understand the assembly of the microplastic microbial community in river ecosystems. In this study, we investigated the composition and ecological functions of the bacterial community on microplastics from the Three Gorges Reservoir area compared with those in water, sediment, and soil at species-level via full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The results showed that the full-length 16S rRNA sequencing provided more detail and accurate taxa resolution of the bacterial community in microplastics (100%), water (99.90%), sediment (99.95%), and soil (100%). Betaproteobacteriales were the most abundant bacteria in microplastics (14.1%), water (32.3%), sediments (27.2%), and soil (21.0%). Unexpectedly, oligotrophic SAR11 clade was the third abundant bacteria (8.51%) and dominated the ecological functions of the bacterial community in water, but it was less observed on microplastics, with a relative abundance of 2.73×10-5. However, four opportunistic pathogens identified at the species level were selectively enriched on microplastics. Stenotrophomonas maltophilia was the main opportunistic pathogen on microplastics (0.29%). Sediment rather than soil and water may be contributed mostly to pathogens on microplastics. Moreover, some bacteria species with the biodegradation function of microplastics were enriched on microplastics, such as bacteria Rhodobacter sp., and endemic bacteria Luteimonas sp. The distinct bacteria composition on microplastics enhanced several ecological functions, such as xenobiotics biodegradation, which allows screening the bacteria with the biodegradation function of microplastics through long-term exposure.

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Data Availability

The raw full-length 16S rRNA gene sequences generated in the present study were deposited in the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database (https://submit.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/subs/sra/) under accession number SRP273082.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 32071614]; the Starting Research Fund from Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences [grant number Y9519802]; and Funding Project of Sino-Africa Joint Research Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences [grant number E0291P0101].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lumo Road No.1, Wuchang District, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Weihong Zhang, Wenke Yuan, Lu Chen, Chen Ye, Ying Jiang & Yuyi Yang

  2. Center of the Plant Ecology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Weihong Zhang, Wenke Yuan, Lu Chen, Chen Ye & Yuyi Yang

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100049, China

    Weihong Zhang

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  1. Weihong Zhang
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  2. Wenke Yuan
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  3. Lu Chen
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Weihong Zhang and Yuyi Yang; Methodology: Wenke Yuan and Ying Jiang; Writing- original draft: Weihong Zhang; Visualization: Chen Ye; Software: Lu Chen and Weihong Zhang; Writing- reviewing and editing: Wenke Yuan and Yuyi Yang.

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Correspondence to Yuyi Yang.

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Zhang, W., Yuan, W., Chen, L. et al. Uniqueness and Dependence of Bacterial Communities on Microplastics: Comparison with Water, Sediment, and Soil. Microb Ecol 84, 985–995 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-021-01919-0

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