Soil plastispheres as hotpots of antibiotic resistance genes and potential pathogens

In the Anthropocene, increasing pervasive plastic pollution is creating a new environmental compartment, the plastisphere. How the plastisphere affects microbial communities and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) is an issue of global concern. Although this has been studied in aquatic ecosystems, our understanding of plastisphere microbiota in soil ecosystems remains poor. Here, we investigated plastisphere microbiota and ARGs of four types of microplastics (MPs) from diverse soil environments, and revealed effects of manure, temperature, and moisture on them. Our results showed that the MPs select for microbial communities in the plastisphere, and that these plastisphere communities are involved in diverse metabolic pathways, indicating that they could drive diverse ecological processes in the soil ecosystem. The relationship within plastisphere bacterial zero-radius operational taxonomic units (zOTUs) was predominantly positive, and neutral processes appeared to dominate community assembly. However, deterministic processes were more important in explaining the variance in ARGs in plastispheres. A range of potential pathogens and ARGs were detected in the plastisphere, which were enriched compared to the soil but varied across MPs and soil types. We further found that the addition of manure and elevation of soil temperature and moisture all enhance ARGs in plastispheres, and potential pathogens increase with soil moisture. These results suggested that plastispheres are habitats in which an increased potential pathogen abundance is spatially co-located with an increased abundance of ARGs under global change. Our findings provided new insights into the community ecology of the microbiome and antibiotic resistome of the soil plastisphere.

Automated summary

The study revealed the effects of microplastics on microbiota and antibiotic resistance genes in the soil plastisphere. Microbial communities in the plastisphere are involved in diverse metabolic pathways, potentially driving ecological processes in the soil ecosystem. Deterministic processes were found to be more important in explaining the variance in ARGs within plastispheres.