Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Environ Int. 2024 Aug;190:108901. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2024.108901. Epub 2024 Jul 21.
Upon entering the marine environment, plastics are colonized by a plethora of microorganisms to form a plastisphere, influencing the fate and transport of the plastic debris and the health of marine ecosystems. The assembly of marine plastisphere is generally believed to be dominated by stochastic processes. However, it remains elusive whether microbial interaction in the assembly of plastisphere microbial communities is conserved or not. We analyzed the plastisphere microbiomes of 137 plastic debris samples from intertidal zones at different geographical locations and habitats (seagrass, coral, mangrove, beach, and open ocean) and compared them with the surrounding sediment and seawater microbiomes. Microbial community structures of the plastisphere from different locations were more similar to each other but differed substantially from the surrounding sediment and water microbiomes, implying a common mechanism of plastisphere assembly. We used different machine learning algorithms (Multinomial Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine, Decision Trees, Random Forest, and Artificial Neural Networks) to classify plastic debris samples with high sensitivity based on the microbiome composition. Eukaryotic and prokaryotic phototrophic organisms such as green algae, diatoms, and cyanobacteria, were found to be enriched on the plastic surfaces. Network analysis revealed the central role of the phototrophic organisms in the formation and sustenance of the plastispheres. We found that phototrophs served as core members interacting strongly with heterotrophic organisms in marine plastisphere, irrespective of the sampling location, habitats, and polymer types. This would explain the stochastic assembly of the plastisphere along with conserved properties driven by the phototrophs in the surrounding environment. Our results highlight the importance of phototrophic organisms in shaping the marine plastisphere microbial communities.
当进入海洋环境时，塑料会被大量微生物定植，形成一个塑料体，影响塑料碎片的命运和迁移以及海洋生态系统的健康。海洋塑料体的组装通常被认为主要由随机过程主导。然而，微生物在塑料体微生物群落组装中的相互作用是否保守仍然难以捉摸。我们分析了来自不同地理位置和栖息地（海草、珊瑚、红树林、海滩和公海）潮间带的 137 个塑料碎片样本的塑料体微生物组，并将其与周围沉积物和海水微生物组进行了比较。来自不同地点的塑料体微生物群落结构彼此之间更为相似，但与周围沉积物和水微生物组有很大的不同，这表明存在一种共同的塑料体组装机制。我们使用不同的机器学习算法（多项逻辑回归、支持向量机、决策树、随机森林和人工神经网络）根据微生物组组成，以高灵敏度对塑料碎片样本进行分类。真核和原核光合生物，如绿藻、硅藻和蓝藻，被发现富集在塑料表面。网络分析揭示了光合生物在塑料体形成和维持中的核心作用。我们发现，无论采样地点、栖息地和聚合物类型如何，光合生物都作为与异养生物强烈相互作用的核心成员存在于海洋塑料体中。这可以解释塑料体的随机组装以及由周围环境中的光合生物驱动的保守特性。我们的研究结果强调了光合生物在塑造海洋塑料体微生物群落中的重要性。
