Whole genome sequence of Arthrobacter sp. from Iloilo City landfill soil unveils potential plastic biodegradation genes.

Plastics are synthetic materials that have transformed society in a lot of ways, yet widespread use of these materials has caused a staggering amount of pollution in the environment. Among these plastics, polypropylene and low-density polyethylene are two of the most used plastics for packaging globally. Currently, only two enzymes were characterized for low density polyethylene degradation while no specific enzymes have been confirmed to degrade polypropylene. In this study, one bacterial isolate from landfill soil was assessed for potential polypropylene and low-density polyethylene degradation abilities using gravimetric methods by measuring the initial and final weight of plastic films. Results showed that after 60 days of incubation, a total decrease of 8.04% was observed for polypropylene plastics and 3.13% for low density polyethylene plastics. Whole genome sequencing using Illumina Nextseq™ 1000 generated a total number of 3,746,011 assembled base pairs for Isolate 1 using SPAdes. Phylogenetic tree construction using the Bacterial Pan-Genome Analysis (BPGA) tool revealed close relation of the isolate to Arthrobacter sp. Analysis of the annotated whole genome sequence against the Plastic database revealed 11 putative protein coding genes that encode enzymes with potential to break down plastics.