Microbes and Plastic: A Love Hate Relationship?

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When plastic in the ocean is broken down by the sun, what happens to the
surrounding ocean and it’s living inhabitants? To answer this question,
visiting graduate student Lixin Zhu, Associate Professor Aron Stubbins
https://cos.northeastern.edu/people/aron-stubbins/, and their team
exposed plastic to UV radiation in the lab and observed the impact on
bacteria and other microbes living in surrounding ocean water.

Results indicated that as the degraded plastic released dissolved
organic carbon, some microbes were able to utilize the additional carbon
to increase their growth, but for other microbes, growth was inhibited
by the presence of degraded plastic. These findings, recently published
in The Journal of Hazardous Materials
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389419310192 illustrate
the complexity of interactions between marine debris, the environment,
and marine organisms. The Stubbins lab will continue and extend this
research investigating sunlight’s impact on ocean plastic, thanks to a
new grant
https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/08/07/nearly-eight-million-tons-of-plastic-are-missing-from-our-oceans-new-research-shines-some-light-on-what-may-be-happening/
from the National Science Foundation.



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