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Functional interplay between plastic polymers and microbes: a comprehensive review

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Abstract

Escalated production of plastic, their worldwide distribution and persistent nature finally results into their environmental accumulation causing severe threats to the ecological environment and biotic health. Thus, development of suitable measurements for environmental remediation of plastic may be an urgent issue in this plastic age. Some recent reviews have categorized the microbial species able to degrade different plastic polymers and the different factors effecting bio-degradation of plastic are poorly understood. This review comprehensively discusses bio-degradation of traditional and biodegradable plastic polymers both in natural and biological environment (gut microbes and fungi) to understand different factors regulating their degradation, and also shows how degradation of plastic polymers under abiotic factors influence subsequent biological degradation. Different physicochemical modifications like - breaking large polymers into small fragments by pre-treatment, functional groups enrichment, identifying potent microbial species (consortia) and engineering microbial enzymes might be crucial for bio-degradations of plastic. Effects of micro/nanoplastic and other chemical intermediates, formed during the bio-degradation of plastic, on species composition, abundance, growth, metabolism and enzymatic systems of microbes involved in the bio-degradation of plastic should be determined in future research.

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Funding

We would like to acknowledge the CSIR–JRF grant to the first author (File No. 08/155(0075)/2019-EMR-I) and FRPDF scheme, Presidency University, Kolkata, India. Authors are also grateful to DST-SERB, Govt. of India for funding research project ((EEQ/2018/000275) to the corresponding author. We are thankful to DST-FIST for sponsoring Infrastructural facility to DLS (SR/FST/ LSI-560/2013(C))We are thankful to DST-FIST for sponsoring Infrastructural facility to DLS (SR/FST/ LSI-560/2013(C)).

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Author notes

  1. Sukhendu Maity, Sambuddha Banerjee and Chayan Biswas have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Integrative Biology Research Unit (IBRU), Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, Kolkata, India

    Sukhendu Maity, Sambuddha Banerjee, Chayan Biswas, Rajkumar Guchhait, Ankit Chatterjee & Kousik Pramanick

  2. Department of Zoology, Mahishadal Raj College, Purba Medinipur, India

    Rajkumar Guchhait

Authors
  1. Sukhendu Maity
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  2. Sambuddha Banerjee
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  3. Chayan Biswas
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  4. Rajkumar Guchhait
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  5. Ankit Chatterjee
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  6. Kousik Pramanick
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Contributions

SM—Conceptualization-Lead, Data curation-Lead, Formal analysis-Lead, Funding acquisition-Equal, Writing-original draft-Lead. SB—Data curation-Supporting, Formal analysis-Supporting, Writing original draft-Supporting. CB—Data curation-Supporting, Formal analysis-Supporting, Writing-original draft-Supporting. RG—Data curation-Supporting, Formal analysis-Supporting, Writing-original draft-Supporting. AC—Data curation-Supporting, Formal analysis-Supporting. KP—Conceptualization-Lead, Funding acquisition-Equal, Validation-Lead, Writing-review & editing-Equal.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kousik Pramanick.

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Maity, S., Banerjee, S., Biswas, C. et al. Functional interplay between plastic polymers and microbes: a comprehensive review. Biodegradation 32, 487–510 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-021-09954-x

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