Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Investigation of Polystyrene Damage Due to Colonization by Locally Isolated Xylaria sp.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Colonization of microorganisms on pollutants is the first indication of the potential ability of microbes to utilize plastic pollutants as a carbon source by sequential biodegradation into usable form for sustenance. The Philippines is considered the third highest country contributing to global mismanaged plastic waste. To locally manage and find a natural and innovative solution to this worldwide concern, this study aimed to evaluate the capacity of Xylaria sp. SDM (sterile dark mycelia) wild type, which was previously reported to colonize polyethylene plastic and mutant strains to colonize polystyrene, a plastic pollutant widely produced in the world. Assessment of the ability of local Xylaria sp. strains to grow, penetrate, and damage the surface and inner structures of polystyrene was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Methodology: Xylaria sp. strains were cultured in a pH 5.0 mineral medium with 0.5% glucose as carbon source and polystyrene as a co-carbon source, and stored at 25 0 C for 50 days. At the end of the incubation period, due to irremovable fungal strains on the surface of the polystyrene strips, samples of polystyrene from each strain were subjected to SEM. Results: On the 20th day of incubation, the presence of mucilaginous sheaths and fungal growth was observed on the surface of treated polystyrene strips. At the end of the 50-day incubation period, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) confirmed fungal growth and colonization, through the presence of mycelial mats and hyphae, of the wild type and mutant strains on the surface and inner structures of polystyrene except the control. Moreover, physical surface damage in the form of holes, cracks, and crevices on polystyrene demonstrated the active burrowing action of Xylaria sp. strains further supporting the potential of this fungus to damage polystyrene plastic. Conclusion: Whereas fungal growth on a polymer surface is necessary but not sufficient to conclude the process of carbon assimilation as the final biodegradation step, the initial colonization of Xylaria sp. strains on polystyrene supports its ability to establish itself and physically damage the pollutant. Hence, this study extended the existing knowledge on the colonizing ability of Xylaria sp. on plastic making it a potential candidate organism to biodegrade plastic waste, which is one of the topmost environmental waste hazards in the world today.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".