Superfood from microplastics? – Microbial degradation of microplastics and biotransformation into essential biomolecules

Microplastics (MP) has become of greatest environmental concern since relatively high quantities of MPs has been found from ocean and lakes, however, the fate of the MP carbon in microbial and pelagic food webs at biomolecule level is still unclear. In the BIOTRANS project we focus on the biodegradation and biotransformation of the three most common plastics by using 13C-labelled materials, metabolomics, metatranscriptomic analysis and compound specific stable isotope analysis. This project will generate new approaches for studying degradation and utilization of recalcitrant compounds in the environmental systems, and has a large potential to change our understanding of the fate of MP carbon in the microbial food.