Published Paper Details:

Polyethylene (PE) waste in municipal landfills is a major pollutant, yet the indigenous microbial consortia capable of its degradation are poorly characterized. In this study, we performed a comprehensive shotgun metagenomic analysis of microbial communities from three Indian landfill sites (Okhla, Ghazipur, and Pirana) using publicly available sequence datasets (SRA/ENA). Reads were quality-controlled (Trimmomatic, FastQC) and taxonomically profiled (Kraken2); taxa of interest were cross-referenced against NCBI, BacDive, MBGD, and Ensembl Bacteria to identify known and putative PE-degrading bacteria. To our knowledge, this is the first study explicitly exploring PE-degradation potential via metagenomics at the Okhla and Ghazipur landfills. We found that the Okhla landfill community was dominated by Actinobacteria (~48.5% of bacterial reads), notably Streptomyces and Saccharomonospora. Across sites, several genera previously linked to polymer degradation were detected, including Saccharomonospora, Streptomyces (Actinobacteria), Rhodococcus (particularly R. erythropolis), and Cupriavidus (e.g., C. campinensis). Overall, the prevalence of these taxa and enzymes suggests that Indian landfill microbiomes harbor significant plastic-degrading capacity. These findings provide a foundation for bioremediation strategies and the discovery of novel plastic-degrading enzymes from landfill microbial communities.