Unique Bacterial Community of the Biofilm on Microplastics in Coastal Water

Being immersed in seawater for a few days, microorganisms will adhere to the surface of different materials and form biofilms. After being immersed in seawater for 1 week, high-throughput sequencing method was used to analyze the bacterial community structure of the biofilms on the surface of microbeads with different materials including steel, SiO₂, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Operational taxonomic unit clustering results showed that some differences existed in the bacterial communities attached to the surface of different microbeads. Each microbead made by different material had its unique bacterial community. The heatmap indicated that the dominant genera on the surface of different microbeads were different from each other. Quantitative analysis showed that the relative abundance of dominant genera were different among different types of microbeads. Beta diversity analysis and principal component analysis showed that difference in the bacterial community on surface of steel-bead and PVC-bead was the most significant.