Phys.org  June 3, 2024 Plastic may serve as a potential carbon and energy source for microbes, yet the contribution of marine microbes, especially marine fungi to plastic degradation is not well constrained. An international team of researchers (the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Switzerland) isolated the fungus Parengyodontium album from floating plastic debris and measured fungal-mediated mineralization rates (conversion to CO2) of polyethylene (PE). When the PE was pretreated with UV light, the biodegradation rate of the initially added PE was 0.044 %/day. They traced the incorporation of PE-derived 13C carbon into P. album biomass. Despite the high mineralization rate incorporation of […]