Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Non-destructive microplastic isolation from water and sediment samples v1

This protocol describes a non-destructive method for isolating microplastics from water and sediment samples that preserves the associated microbial biofilm, enabling both culture-based and sequencing-based analysis of plastisphere communities.

2024 4 citations
Article Tier 2

Have You Ever Seen a Microplastic? A Collaborative High School–Academia Approach for Identification, Quantification and Raising Awareness of Microplastics in a River Crossing Urban Area

Researchers designed a high school–university collaboration where students collected water samples from an urban river, identified microplastics by microscopy, and contributed to local pollution mapping — demonstrating that student-led citizen science can meaningfully advance microplastic monitoring while raising environmental awareness.

2025 Journal of Chemical Education
Article Tier 2

Exploring the City of Biofilms: An Engaging Analogy-Based Activity for Students to Learn Biofilms

This educational paper describes an analogy-based classroom activity that teaches students about bacterial biofilms by comparing them to a city with infrastructure and social organization. Biofilms form on microplastic surfaces in the environment, and understanding biofilm biology is relevant to how microplastics interact with microbial communities.

2023 CourseSource 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Monitoring Microplastics in Surface Water—A Pacing Guide for Grades 5–12

This educational guide introduces a citizen science protocol for middle and high school students to monitor microplastics in surface water. Engaging students in real data collection builds environmental literacy and contributes to broader community-level microplastic monitoring efforts.

2023 Connected Science Learning
Article Tier 2

Microplastics in marine environments: protocol for isolating natural biofilms from seawater-incubated particles v1

Researchers developed and described a standardized laboratory protocol for incubating microplastic particles in seawater to cultivate natural marine biofilms, covering device preparation, sample collection, and downstream processing steps designed to minimize contamination while enabling reproducible study of microbial communities, potential pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance genes on plastic surfaces.

2022 1 citations
Article Tier 2

A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) using Ocean Plastic Microbes as a Framework that Is Impactful for Both In-Person and Online Course Modalities

This paper is not directly about microplastics as an environmental hazard; it describes a course-based undergraduate research experience built around studying microbes that colonize ocean plastic debris, using it as a pedagogical framework for biology laboratory courses.

2023 Education Research International
Article Tier 2

Association between microplastics and biofilm: a new perspective for monitoring microplastics in urban rivers

Researchers reviewed the use of biofilms as a monitoring matrix for microplastics in urban rivers, drawing on literature about microplastic occurrence in Brazilian rivers and biofilm-associated adsorption of emerging contaminants in freshwater. The study argues that biofilm analysis offers a complementary perspective to water and sediment monitoring because biofilms accumulate pollutants over days, providing an integrated signal of microplastic exposure in the water column.

2025 Revista Brasileira de Ciências Ambientais
Article Tier 2

Culturing the Plastisphere: comparing methods to isolate culturable bacteria colonising microplastics

Researchers compared culturing methods for isolating bacteria from the plastisphere (plastic-colonizing microbial communities), finding that method choice strongly influences which bacterial taxa are recovered and that standardization is needed to better assess pathogen and resistance gene enrichment on microplastics.

2023 Frontiers in Microbiology 22 citations
Article Tier 2

A Novel Application of Filtration for the Collection of Microplastics in Waterways

Researchers developed a novel filtration system for collecting microplastics from waterways, demonstrating its effectiveness as a scalable and practical tool for environmental monitoring and plastic pollution assessment.

2024 Research Square (Research Square)
Article Tier 2

Analysis of Microplastics in Water and Biofilm Matrices in Lahor Reservoirs, East Java, Indonesia

Researchers detected microplastics in both water and biofilm samples from Lahor Reservoir in East Java, Indonesia, finding that biofilms accumulate microplastics and may serve as a useful monitoring matrix for assessing plastic contamination in freshwater reservoir ecosystems.

2022 The Journal of Experimental Life Sciences 5 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic is an Abundant and Distinct Microbial Habitat in an Urban River

Researchers demonstrated that microplastic surfaces in an urban river host a microbial community that is distinct from surrounding water and sediment communities, establishing microplastic as an abundant and ecologically distinct habitat for river microorganisms.

2014 Environmental Science & Technology 1428 citations