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Fungal plastiphily and its link to generic virulence traits makes environmental microplastics a global health factor
Summary
This meta-analysis reveals that microplastics in soil serve as hotspots where disease-causing fungi accumulate and thrive. The findings are concerning because many of the fungi that colonize microplastics share traits with human pathogens, suggesting that plastic pollution may be creating new breeding grounds for infectious disease in the environment.
Fungi comprise significant human pathogens, causing over a billion infections each year. Plastic pollution alters niches of fungi by providing trillions of artificial microhabitats, mostly in the form of microplastics, where pathogens might accumulate, thrive, and evolve. However, interactions between fungi and microplastics in nature are largely unexplored. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated the assembly, architecture, and ecology of mycobiomes in soil (micro)plastispheres near human dwellings in a model- and network-based metagenome study combined with a global-scale meta-analysis. Our results reveal a strong selection of important human pathogens, in an idiosyncratic, otherwise predominantly neutrally assembled plastisphere, which is strongly linked to generic fungal virulence traits. These findings substantiate our niche expansion postulate, demonstrate the emergence of plastiphily among fungal pathogens and imply the existence of a ‘plastisphere virulence school’, underpinning the need to declare microplastics as a factor of global health.