Long-term exposure to polyethylene restructures the multi-kingdom soil microbiota in maize fields

Soil contamination from polyethylene (PE) has emerged as a new global concern, yet its long-term legacy effects on soil microbiota remain poorly understood. Here, we conduct an eight-year field experiment to investigate how PE residues influence microbiota assembly across multiple microbial kingdoms (bacteria, fungi, and protists), and the consequent effects on soil antibiotic resistome. Our results reveal that bacterial communities are more stable and resilient than fungal and protistan communities in response to PE exposure. Bacterial assembly is predominantly shaped by deterministic processes under PE exposure, unlike the more stochastic patterns observed in the other domains. This bacterial deterministic assembly coincides with enhanced microbial biodegradation potential, evidenced by increased abundance of carbon-cycling functional genes in the plastisphere. In parallel, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are found to be more prevalent in the plastisphere under PE exposure. While bacterial hosts play a dominant role in ARGs dissemination, fungal and protistan taxa also contribute through broader inter-kingdom ecological interactions. Together, these findings highlight the critical importance of considering multi-kingdom microbiota assembly when assessing the environmental risks of plastic pollution.