Exploring the plastic degrading ability of microbial communities through metagenomic approach

Abstract

The extensive and uncontrolled usage of plastic has led to the generation of millions of tons of plastic waste resulting in its amassment in the marine and terrestrial environments. Continuous disposal of plastic waste in open environments such as water bodies and landfills have a severe impact on the ecosystem which results in environmental pollution. This untreated disposal of low and high molecular weight plastics is a major environmental concern. These polymers are highly recalcitrant; hence, this global problem of plastic pollution needs urgent attention. This further warrants the exploration of an efficient, eco-friendly, and cost-effective approach to plastic degradation. In the past few years, some of the findings have explored the idea of the degradation of plastics using diverse microbial groups viz., fungi, bacteria, and algae. However, it was found that previously identified microbial agents and their secreted enzymes showed low efficiencies in plastic degradation. So far, in most of the studies, microbial species were isolated from the soil samples collected from plastic dumpsites but there might be several unexplored microbial species that can have greater efficiency to degrade plastics. Such microbial species are still unexplored because of their uncultivable nature in the lab conditions. However, advancements in bioinformatics and sequencing techniques allow rapid metagenomic screening of microbial communities along with the mining of related enzymes and genes involved in biodegradation. Therefore, exploring uncultivable microbial communities through metagenomics could serve as a great tool to find efficient plastic degrading genes and enzymes.