Brazilian Cerrado soil reveals an untapped microbial potential for unpretreated polyethylene biodegradation

Discarded PE-based products pose a social and environmental threat because of their recalcitrance to degradation, a consequence of the unique set of PE's physicochemical properties. In this study we isolated nine novel PE-degrading bacteria from plastic debris found in soil of the savanna-like Brazilian Cerrado. These bacterial strains from the genera Comamonas, Delftia, and Stenotrophomonas showed metabolic activity and cellular viability after a 90-day incubation with PE as the sole carbon source. ATR/FTIR indicated that biodegraded PE undergone oxidation, vinylene formation, chain scission, among other chemical changes. Considerable nanoroughness shifts and vast damages to the micrometric surface were confirmed by AFM and SEM. Further, phase imaging revealed a 46.7% decrease in the viscous area of biodegraded PE whereas Raman spectroscopy confirmed a loss in its crystalline content, suggesting the assimilation of smaller fragments. Intriguingly, biodegraded PE chemical fingerprint suggests that these strains use novel biochemical strategies in the biodegradation process. Our results indicate that these microbes are capable of degrading unpretreated PE of very high molecular weight (191,000gmol^-1) and survive for long periods under this condition, suggesting not only practical applications in waste management and environmental decontamination, but also future directions to understand the unraveled metabolism of synthetic polymers.