Item	Update
Microorganisms	753
Proteins	219
Last update	13/05/2024
Last addition	Protein 00219

New Study on the Global Ocean Microbiome

PlasticDB was used to study the expression of putative plastic-degrading enzymes in the global ocean microbiome. The paper suggests that the expression of these enzymes do not correlate to plastic pollution! Check the paper at: doi.org/10.1186/s40793-024-00575-4.

Collaborate with PlasticDB

We invite researchers, developers, or enthusiasts to contribute to PlasticDB. We are planning on releasing new features and increasing our literature coverage. Please contact us at contact.plasticdb@gmail.com if you think you can help. Thank you! :)

About PlasticDB

The database currently has 753 species of microorganisms that were reported in the scientific literature to have plastic-degrading capabilities and 219 proteins described to breakdown plastics.

The database is updated bimonthly to keep up with new publications and reports of plastic biodegradation. There are several options for using the data in the database:

• Get information about specific species (Microorganisms)
• Get information about the proteins that degrade each type of plastic (Proteins)
• Annotate a single protein and find out if it matches any of the proteins in the database (Annotate gene)
• Annotate a whole genome or metagenome (Annotate genome)
• Annotate and compare genomes or metagenomes (Compare genomes)
• Download a spreadsheet with all information about the microorganisms or download a fasta file with all the protein sequences (Download)

If you have any information about microorganisms and proteins that we could use to improve the database, please submit a request to add, remove, or modify. You can also leave any comments in this form and we will get back to you.

If you used our database in your research, please cite: Victor Gambarini, Olga Pantos, Joanne M Kingsbury, Louise Weaver, Kim M Handley, Gavin Lear, PlasticDB: a database of microorganisms and proteins linked to plastic biodegradation, Database, Volume 2022, 2022, baac008, DOI: doi.org/10.1093/database/baac008.

Notice: Our database contains information on all peer-reviewed scientific literature we have found which reports the microbial degradation of plastics. Many putative plastic-degrading organisms and enzymes have been reported to date and we provide this information such that it may prompt additional investigation and discovery into the global diversity of possible plastic degrading organisms and enzymes. While our database contains 100+ enzymes associated with the degradation of plastics, a minority of these enzymes (8 enzymes) have not been fully characterised, namely for nylon - 00042, 00043, 00044, 00045, and 00062; for polyethylene - 00061 and 00104, and for polystyrene – 00111. While continuing to provide these data in our database, it remains our belief that no enzymes have been categorically shown to degrade polymeric and crystalline PE, ether-based PUR, PS, PVC or PP; none have been thoroughly characterized on a biochemical, functional or structural level to date. We believe that further research is needed to categorically demonstrate the microbial degradation of these plastics.

References and useful databases:

• Polymerdatabase.com contains general information on plastics.
• PMBD is a database for identifying predicted plastic-active enzymes.
• PAZy contains only microbial enzymes that have been exhaustively characterised.