Abstract
Microplastic (MP) is a pervasive pollutant in nature that is colonised by diverse groups of microbes, including potentially pathogenic species. Fungi have been largely neglected in this context, despite their affinity for plastics and their impact as pathogens. To unravel the role of MP as a carrier of fungal pathogens in terrestrial ecosystems and the immediate human environment, epiplastic mycobiomes from municipal plastic waste from Kenya were deciphered using ITS metabarcoding as well as a comprehensive meta-analysis, and visualised via scanning electron as well as confocal laser scanning microscopy. Metagenomic and microscopic findings provided complementary evidence that the terrestrial plastisphere is a suitable ecological niche for a variety of fungal organisms, including important animal and plant pathogens, which formed the plastisphere core mycobiome. We show that MPs serve as selective artificial microhabitats that not only attract distinct fungal communities, but also accumulate certain opportunistic human pathogens, such as cryptococcal and Phoma-like species. Therefore, MP must be regarded a persistent reservoir and potential vector for fungal pathogens in soil environments. Given the increasing amount of plastic waste in terrestrial ecosystems worldwide, this interrelation may have severe consequences for the trans-kingdom and multi-organismal epidemiology of fungal infections on a global scale.
Highlights
Microplastic (MP) is a pervasive pollutant in nature that is colonised by diverse groups of microbes, including potentially pathogenic species
We found potentially human pathogenic fungi that have been previously linked to plastic colonisation in other contexts: the trans-kingdom pathogens Fusarium oxysporum and Alternaria alternata form biofilms on indoor[47] and landfill plastics[48], members of Cladosporium, Phoma and Curvularia have been isolated from environmental plastic particles[49], while Rhodotorula species are known to colonise plastic catheters in hospitals[33]
Our findings demonstrate the need for further investigations to unravel, whether and to what extent plastic pollution contributes to the emergence of fungal infectious diseases and to elucidate the impact of plastic on the evolutionary processes of fungal pathogens
Summary
Microplastic (MP) is a pervasive pollutant in nature that is colonised by diverse groups of microbes, including potentially pathogenic species. The hydrophobic surface of plastic waste provides an ideal environment for microbial colonisation and biofilm formation, and represents a protective ecological niche, the so-called ‘plastisphere’[13] These epiplastic communities harbour Archaea and Bacteria[13,14,15], as well as unicellular and oligocellular eukaryotes including fungi[16,17], and have been found on plastics from marine, limnic, and fluvial ecosystems in numerous biomes from the equator to the polar regions[18]. MP represents a microhabitat with a high selectivity and plasticity, which can have effects at ecosystem level, such as the spread of antibiotic resistances through the concentration of certain lineages[22] or changes in microbial nitrogen and carbon cycle dynamics through shifts in community s tructure[4] In this context, the role of MP as a reservoir and vector for invasive and harmful microbes is a recurring aspect in the relevant literature[11,13,23]. Reasons for the limited state of knowledge on the plastisphere holobiome are, on the one hand, the focus on prokaryotic communities, and, on the other hand, the somewhat limited consideration of terrestrial ecosystems
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