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Microbial consortium driven degradation of mixed microplastics: systematic review on enzymes and omics-based insights
Summary
Microplastics—tiny plastic fragments that have been linked to health concerns—are notoriously hard to clean up, especially when different types of plastic are mixed together. This review pulls together existing research on using teams of bacteria and their enzymes to break down these mixed plastic pollutants, offering a more eco-friendly alternative to current cleanup methods. While this approach shows real promise in the lab, the researchers note that scientists still need to figure out how to make it work efficiently in real-world settings like polluted soil and water.
Microplastics (MPs) are among the most persistent pollutants in the environment. Mixed polymer waste further complicates the remediation due to their toxic additives and heterogenous composition. Conventional remediation methods show limited efficiency, especially for mixed MPs. As a result, biological approaches, particularly microbial consortium mediated degradation is a promising alternative. It is gaining increasing attention due to their cooperative metabolism and ability to degrade multiple polymers simultaneously. This review summarizes recent advances in consortium-based degradation of mixed MPs. It compares existing studies and identifies key challenges in translating laboratory findings to real-world. This review further discusses enzymes involved in the degradation of major polymer constituting mixed MPs. In addition, the role of multi-omics approaches like metagenomics, meta-transcriptomics, metabolomics, and integrated systems biology is also highlighted to explain microbial-metabolite interaction, functional pathways, and degradation mechanisms. Further, this review proposed future research directions focusing on green and scalable technologies. These include green biosensors for real-time monitoring, agro based aerogels and biochar for microbial immobilization, and nano-bubble assisted systems to enhance degradation under economic real-world conditions.