The number of plastic-degrading microorganisms reported is rapidly increasing, making it possible to explore the conservation and distribution of presumed plastic-degrading traits across the diverse microbial tree of life. Putative degraders of conventional high-molecular-weight polymers, including polyamide, polystyrene, polyvinylchloride, and polypropylene, are spread widely across bacterial and fungal branches of the tree of life, although evidence for plastic degradation by a majority of these taxa appears limited. In contrast, we found strong degradation evidence for the synthetic polymer polylactic acid (PLA), and the microbial species related to its degradation are phylogenetically conserved among the bacterial family Pseudonocardiaceae. We collated data on genes and enzymes related to the degradation of all types of plastic to identify 16,170 putative plastic degradation orthologs by mining publicly available microbial genomes. The plastic with the largest number of putative orthologs, 10,969, was the natural polymer polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), followed by the synthetic polymers polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polycaprolactone (PCL), with 8,233 and 6,809 orthologs, respectively. These orthologous genes were discovered in the genomes of 6,000 microbial species, and most of them are as yet not identified as plastic degraders. Furthermore, all these species belong to 12 different microbial phyla, of which just 7 phyla have reported degraders to date. We have centralized information on reported plastic-degrading microorganisms within an interactive and updatable phylogenetic tree and database to confirm the global and phylogenetic diversity of putative plastic-degrading taxa and provide new insights into the evolution of microbial plastic-degrading capabilities and avenues for future discovery.

中文翻译：

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塑料降解微生物的系统发育分布


报道的塑料降解微生物的数量正在迅速增加，使得探索假定的塑料降解特性在不同微生物生命树中的保存和分布成为可能。传统高分子量聚合物（包括聚酰胺、聚苯乙烯、聚氯乙烯和聚丙烯）的假定降解剂广泛分布在生命之树的细菌和真菌分支中，尽管大多数这些类群降解塑料的证据似乎有限。相比之下，我们发现了合成聚合物聚乳酸（PLA）的强烈降解证据，并且与其降解相关的微生物物种在假诺卡氏菌科中在系统发育上是保守的。我们整理了与所有类型塑料降解相关的基因和酶的数据，通过挖掘公开的微生物基因组来识别 16,170 种假定的塑料降解直向同源物。拥有最多直系同源物数量的塑料是天然聚合物聚羟基丁酸酯 (PHB)，为 10,969 个，其次是合成聚合物聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯 (PET) 和聚己内酯 (PCL)，分别有 8,233 个和 6,809 个直系同源物。这些直系同源基因在 6,000 种微生物物种的基因组中被发现，其中大多数尚未被鉴定为塑料降解剂。此外，所有这些物种都属于 12 个不同的微生物门，迄今为止只有 7 个门报道了降解剂。 我们在交互式和可更新的系统发育树和数据库中集中了已报告的塑料降解微生物的信息，以确认假定的塑料降解类群的全局和系统发育多样性，并为微生物塑料降解能力的进化和未来发现的途径提供新的见解。