Metabolic Cascade for Remediation of Plastic Waste: a Case Study on Microplastic Degradation

Microplastics have emerged as an ubiquitous pollutant with severe environmental and human health hazards. Over the decades encountering these pollutants, microorganisms have evolved with the tool(s) to degrade different classes of plastic polymers. Several enzymes including depolymerases and lipases have been studied for the reduction of plastic toxicity. Since the degradation of plastic is a long process, thus, meta “omics” approaches have been employed to identify the active microbiota and microbial dynamics involved in the mitigation of microplastic-contaminated sites. Further, protein engineering approaches have opened new avenues to tackle this alarming situation. Increasing plastic contamination is serving as a breeding ground and carrier for spread of other persistent chlorinated pollutant. This review for the first time summarized a comprehensive report on microplastic sources, toxicity, and bio-based mitigation approaches. It covers deeper understanding about multi-omic approaches in microplastic research and engineering technologies in microplastic degradation. The guidelines and regulation to tackle the increasing pollution have been discussed. Knowledge gaps and opportunities have been comprehensively compiled that would aid the state-of-the-art information in the available literature for the researchers to further address this issue.