Yang Li, Liu Ying, Gao Jie, Peng Xia-Wei, Bai Zhi-Hui, Zhuang Xu-Liang
College of Biological Sciences and Technology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China.
Key Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
Huan Jing Ke Xue. 2020 Dec 8;41(12):5609-5616. doi: 10.13227/j.hjkx.202003273.
Polystyrene (PS) foam is one of the main plastic materials dispersed in the environment. In this study, we observed that the insect-super mealworms (), which belong to a species of the genus, are able to consume and degrade PS foam. Individual consumed an extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) over 50 days with high survival rates. Analyses of the frass egested using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) confirmed the formation of a new oxygen-bearing functional group in the EPS. Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) analyses indicated that the depolymerization of ingested EPS with decreases in both and was observed, suggesting that the EPS was biodegraded. We also used 16S rRNA gene sequences to analyze the gut bacteria of under three different feeding conditions, including with polystyrene, bran, and bran plus polystyrene. Under different dietary conditions, the gut microbiota of showed significant differences, such as and becoming significantly enriched. In vitro studies using 90-days gut microbial culturing experiments indicated that gut microbiota contributed to PS degradation. Our research demonstrates that intestinal bacteria played an essential role in the degradation of PS by , and provides a new theoretical basis and application ideas for the biodegradation of PS.
聚苯乙烯（PS）泡沫是环境中分散的主要塑料材料之一。在本研究中，我们观察到属于拟步甲属的昆虫——黄粉虫能够消耗并降解PS泡沫。个体在50天内消耗了一种细胞外聚合物（EPS），且存活率很高。使用傅里叶变换红外光谱（FTIR）对排出的粪便进行分析，证实了EPS中形成了一个新的含氧官能团。凝胶渗透色谱（GPC）分析表明，观察到摄入的EPS发生解聚，其分子量和分子量分布均降低，这表明EPS被生物降解。我们还使用16S rRNA基因序列分析了在三种不同喂养条件下黄粉虫的肠道细菌，这三种条件包括喂食聚苯乙烯、麸皮以及麸皮加聚苯乙烯。在不同饮食条件下，黄粉虫的肠道微生物群表现出显著差异，例如某些菌属显著富集。使用90天肠道微生物培养实验进行的体外研究表明，肠道微生物群有助于PS的降解。我们的研究证明，肠道细菌在黄粉虫对PS的降解中起重要作用，并为PS的生物降解提供了新的理论基础和应用思路。
