Enriched microbial consortia from natural environments reveal core groups of microbial taxa able to degrade terephthalate and terphthalamide.

Millions of tons of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are produced each year, however only ~30% of PET is currently recycled in the United States. Improvement of PET recycling and upcycling practices is an area of ongoing research. One method for PET upcycling is chemical depolymerization (through hydrolysis or aminolysis) into aromatic monomers and subsequent biodegradation.

Biofilm mitigation in hybrid chemical-biological upcycling of waste polymers.

Accumulation of plastic waste in the environment is a serious global issue. To deal with this, there is a need for improved and more efficient methods for plastic waste recycling. One approach is to depolymerize plastic using pyrolysis or chemical deconstruction followed by microbial-upcycling of the monomers into more valuable products.

Persistence of location-specific microbial signatures on boats during voyages.

Objects collect microorganisms from their surroundings and develop a microbial "fingerprint" that may be useful for determining an object's past location (provenance). It may be possible to use ubiquitous microorganisms for forensics or as environmental sensors. Here, we use microbial communities in the Chesapeake Bay region to demonstrate the use of natural microorganisms as biological sensors to determine the past location of boats.

Coexistence of specialist and generalist species within mixed plastic derivative-utilizing microbial communities.

Background: Plastic-degrading microbial isolates offer great potential to degrade, transform, and upcycle plastic waste. Tandem chemical and biological processing of plastic wastes has been shown to substantially increase the rates of plastic degradation; however, the focus of this work has been almost entirely on microbial isolates (either bioengineered or naturally occurring). We propose that a microbial community has even greater potential for plastic upcycling.