New IOW study: Do microplastics harbour additional risks by colonization with harmful bacteria?
The alarming omnipresence of microplastics in rivers, lakes, and oceans increasingly gains the critical focus of research. So far, however, there has been no reliable knowledge as to whether microplastic particles in aquatic ecosystems promote the development of special bacterial communities or even the spread of pathogens. A recent study within the project MikrOMIK* under the lead of IOW has now for the first time systematically investigated whether bacterial biofilms on microplastic particles differ from those on natural materials and how various environmental factors such as salinity or nutrients influence the community composition.
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