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Microplastic–Bacteria Interactions: Toxicity, Colonisation, Degradation and Prospects
Summary
Tiny plastic particles (microplastics) that end up in water, soil, and even our gut don't just sit there, they interact with bacteria in ways that can be harmful or surprisingly helpful. This review pulls together existing research showing that microplastics can stress out healthy bacteria and help harmful germs (including drug-resistant ones) cluster and spread on their surfaces, but certain bacteria can also break the plastic down. Understanding this two-sided relationship matters because it could help scientists better predict health risks from microplastic pollution and develop bacteria-based methods to clean it up.
Microplastics (MPs) have established complex bidirectional interactions with bacteria, encompassing both mutualism and antagonism. This review advances a unified 'Stress-Habitat-Degradation' triangular model that systematically integrates three interconnected dimensions: (1) MPs-induced biotoxic stress on bacterial communities in water, soil, guts and plant tissues; (2) the plastisphere as a colonisation substrate that enriches pathogens and facilitates ARG spread; and (3) enzymatic biodegradation by functional taxa like Pseudomonas via specific enzymatic pathways. This framework explicitly links microbial community dynamics to functional outcomes, demonstrating that the same MPs-bacteria interplay simultaneously drives toxicity/pathogen enrichment and beneficial degradation. Environmental factors (temperature, oxygen, soil organic matter) profoundly shape these interactions by regulating gene expression and community succession. Crucially, we identify and resolve apparent contradictions-such as differential Gram-positive/Gram-negative responses and conflicting diversity trends-by attributing them to variations in polymer type, particle size, concentration, exposure time, host species and test conditions. Overall, this synthesis provides a critical integration of MPs-bacterial interactions and proposes a novel pollution control strategy centred on these interactions, redefining environmental risk assessment and bioremediation approaches.