The Microbiome of Nurdles: Life on the Primary Microplastics of the Texas Gulf Coast.

Nurdles are small, pre-production plastic pellets. Globally, nurdles are the second largest source of microplastic pollution due to release during manufacture and transport. As these nurdles persist in the environment, they undergo weathering-a process that significantly increases surface area and colonization by microbes. To gain an understanding of the composition of the microbiome found on nurdles, full-length 16S targeted metagenomic sequencing was performed on DNA extracted from nurdles collected from the Texas Gulf Coast. Sequencing data showed a greater amount and diversity of microbes found to be associated with nurdles than with the sand from which the nurdles were collected.