Effects of plastic aging on biodegradation of polystyrene by Tenebrio molitor larvae: Insights into gut microbiome and bacterial metabolism.
Sci Total Environ
; 953: 176130, 2024 Nov 25.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39260508
ABSTRACT
Plastics aging reduces resistance to microbial degradation. Plastivore Tenebrio molitor rapidly biodegrades polystyrene (PS, size < 80 µm), but the effects of aging on PS biodegradation by T. molitor remain uncharacterized. This study examined PS biodegradation over 24 days following three pre-treatments freezing with UV exposure (PS1), UV exposure (PS2), and freezing (PS3), compared to pristine PS (PSv) microplastic. The pretreatments deteriorated PS polymers, resulting in slightly higher specific PS consumption (602.8, 586.1, 566.7, and 563.9 mg PS·100 larvae-1·d-1, respectively) and mass reduction rates (49.6 %, 49.5 %, 49.2 %, and 48.7 %, respectively) in PS1, PS2, and PS3 compared to PSv. Improved biodegradation correlated with reduced molecular weights and the formation of oxidized functional groups. Larvae fed more aged PS exhibited greater gut microbial diversity, with microbial community and metabolic pathways shaped by PS aging, as supported by co-occurrence network analysis. These findings indicated that the aging treatments enhanced PS biodegradation by only limited extent but impacted greater on gut microbiome and bacterial metabolic genes, indicating that the T. molitor host have highly predominant capability to digest PS plastics and alters gut microbiome to adapt the PS polymers fed to them.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Polystyrenes
/
Tenebrio
/
Biodegradation, Environmental
/
Gastrointestinal Microbiome
/
Larva
Limits:
Animals
Language:
En
Journal:
Sci Total Environ
/
Sci. total environ
/
Science of the total environment
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
China
Country of publication:
Netherlands