Abstract
The current plastic pollution throughout the world is a rising concern that demands the optimization of biodegradation processes. One avenue for this is to identify plastic-degrading bacteria and associated enzymes from the gut bacteria of insect models such as Tenebrio molitor, Plodia interpunctella or Galleria mellonella that have the ability to ingest and rapidly degrade polyethylene. Therefore, this study takes part in understanding the role of the gut bacteria by investigating G. mellonella as a biological model feeding with a diet based on honeybee wax mixed or not with low-density polyethylene. Gut microbiome was analyzed by high throughput 16S rRNA sequencing, and Enterococcaceae and Oxalobacteraceae were found to be the major bacterial families. Compared to the control, the supplementation of low-density polyethylene did not cause significant modification of the bacterial microbiota at community and taxa levels, suggesting bacterial microbiome resilience. The bacterial proteome analysis of gut contents was encouraging for the identification of plastic degrading enzymes such as the phenylacetaldehyde dehydrogenase which participate in styrene degradation. This study allowed a better characterization of the gut bacteria of G. mellonella and provided a basis for the further study of biodegradation of polyethylene based on the bacterial microbiota from insect guts.
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Data availability
The sequencing data have been deposited with links to BioProject accession number PRJNA730794 in the NCBI BioProject database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/). The mass spectrometry proteomics data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository with the dataset identifier PXD026446.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Samuel Latour for his dedicated work. We thank Nicolas Poncelet (ULiège) for his experimental assistance. We thank also Dr. Dominique Baiwir and Prof. Gabriel Mazzucchelli of GIGA-Proteomics team (ULiège) (https://www.gigaproteomics.uliege.be/cms/c_4214690/en/gigaproteo) that directed the protein sequencing. We also thank Hillary Fischer (ULiège), a native English speaker, for proof reading the manuscript.
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GN performed the sampling and the rearing of Galleria mellonella. SM, FD and FF conceived the study and provided the financial support. LS and ARS did the laboratory work. GN and LS analyzed the data and interpreted the results. GN wrote the first draft complemented by LS and FF. All the authors were involved in the writing process (review and editing).
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Noël, G., Serteyn, L., Sare, A.R. et al. Co-diet supplementation of low density polyethylene and honeybee wax did not influence the core gut bacteria and associated enzymes of Galleria mellonella larvae (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae). Int Microbiol 26, 397–409 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-022-00303-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-022-00303-3