Novel bacterial taxa in a minimal lignocellulolytic consortium and their potential for lignin and plastics transformation

Abstract The understanding and manipulation of microbial communities toward the conversion lignocellulose plastics are topics interest in ecology biotechnology. In this study, polymer-degrading capability a minimal lignocellulolytic consortium (MELMC) was explored by genome-resolved metagenomics. MELMC mostly composed (>90%) three bacterial members ( Pseudomonas protegens ; Pristimantibacillus lignocellulolyticus gen. nov., sp. nov; Ochrobactrum gambitense nov) recognized their high-quality metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Functional annotation these MAGs revealed that Pr. could be involved cellulose xylan deconstruction, whereas Ps. catabolize lignin-derived chemical compounds. capacity to transform synthetic assessed two strategies: (i) against databases containing plastic-transforming enzymes; (ii) predicting enzymatic activity based on structural similarities between lignin- plastics-derived compounds, using Simplified Molecular-Input Line-Entry System Tanimoto coefficients. Enzymes depolymerization polyurethane polybutylene adipate terephthalate were found encoded , which phthalates terephthalic acid. axenic culture grew polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) nanoparticles might suitable species for industrial production PHAs context lignin plastic upcycling.