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Interfacial behaviors and synergistic migration mechanisms of antibiotics and resistance genes during microplastic aging: A review of recent advances
Summary
As microplastics break down in the environment, their surfaces change in ways that make them better at picking up antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria genes, essentially turning them into "hitchhiker vehicles" for these hard-to-treat contaminants. This review of existing research explains how weathered microplastics create ideal surfaces for bacteria to swap resistance genes with each other, which could help spread antibiotic resistance—a growing public health threat—through water, soil, and potentially our bodies. Understanding this process matters because it helps scientists predict where these contaminated microplastics travel and how they might eventually be released
Microplastics (MPs) serve as critical vectors for antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). The transport and fate of these co-pollutants are governed by the dynamic evolution of MP interfacial physicochemical properties during aging. This review synthesizes the interfacial behaviors and synergistic migration mechanisms of antibiotics and ARGs associated with aged MPs. Abiotic weathering (photo-oxidation and mechanical abrasion) and biological colonization reshape MP surfaces. The resulting oxygen-containing functional groups and extracellular polymeric substances alter particle polarity, charge density, and roughness. Macroscopic adsorption kinetics and microscopic theoretical calculations, including density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations, reveal a mechanistic shift in antibiotic adsorption. As aging progresses, the dominant interaction transitions from hydrophobic partitioning to a synergistic combination of electrostatic attraction, hydrogen bonding, π-π interactions, and pore-filling, corroborated by interfacial binding energy changes at the electronic structure level. Within the plastisphere microenvironment, MPs facilitate the horizontal gene transfer of ARGs. This dissemination is driven by the co-selection of accumulated pollutants, high-density cellular contact within biofilms, physical entrapment of extracellular DNA, and reactive oxygen species-induced oxidative stress. The subsequent environmental transport and biological release of these composite pollutants depend on their colloidal stability in complex matrices and desorption kinetics in biofluids, regulated primarily by pH gradients, ionic strength variations, and protein corona displacement via the Vroman effect. By elucidating these coupled mechanisms across scales ranging from macroscopic environmental matrices to microscopic quantum chemistry, this review establishes a rigorous theoretical framework for assessing the ecological risks of microplastic-associated composite pollution.