ArticleApplied and environmental microbiology2024
Taxonomic variation, plastic degradation, and antibiotic resistance traits of plastisphere communities in the maturation pond of a wastewater treatment plant.
Article in Applied and environmental microbiology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The plastisphere: not a unique biofilm but a unifying concept for the interdisciplinary plastic biofilm research community.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Article
- Response of microbial community in the soil plastisphere of polypropylene microplastics to the stress of phenanthrene pollution: Microbial composition, function, and network.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Article
- Plastic Type and Condition Have Minimal Impact on Associated Marine Biofilm Communities.Environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Microbes with plastic-degrading and pathogenic potentials are present on plastics in the final polishing pond of a wastewater treatment plant.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Wastewater treatment facilities can filter out some plastics before they reach the open environment, yet microplastics often persist throughout these systems. As they age, microplastics in wastewater may both leach and sorb pollutants and fragment to provide an increased surface area for bacterial attachment and conjugation, possibly impacting antimicrobial resistance (AMR) traits. Despite this, little is known about the effects of persistent plastic pollution on microbial functioning. To address this knowledge gap, we deployed five different artificially weathered plastic types and a glass control into the final maturation pond of a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Ōtautahi-Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand. We sampled the plastic-associated biofilms (plastisphere) at 2, 6, 26, and 52 weeks, along with the ambient pond water, at three different depths (20, 40, and 60 cm from the pond water surface). We investigated the changes in plastisphere microbial diversity and functional potential through metagenomic sequencing. Bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA genes composition did not vary among plastic types and glass controls (
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.