Title Page
Abstract
Contents
1. Introduction 10
1.1. Background 10
1.2. Objective 13
2. Materials and Methods 14
2.1. Sampling locations and sampling strategy 14
2.2. Molecular identification 17
2.3. PCL agar assay 20
3. Results 21
3.1. Identification results 21
3.2. Fungal composition 35
3.3. PCL assay results 37
4. Discussion 47
5. Conclusions 50
6. References 65
7. Abstract in Korean 78
Table 1. Collected PET wastes and information of their sampling location. 16
Table 2. Collected PET wastes and isolated fungal species. 28
Table 3. Fungi isolated from PET wastes and their PCL degradation assay results. 40
Supplementary Table S1. Strains and their GenBank accession numbers used for phylogenetic analyses in this study. 51
Supplementary Table S2. Clear zone data for all tested fungal strains. 59
Figure 1. Data for plastic waste and fungi collected along Korean seacoasts (A). Data for plastic waste collected from mudflats and sand (B). 15
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of fungal genes and the location of primers used for PCR. 19
Figure 3. Phylogenetic tree of fungi isolated from marine plastic waste based on ML analysis of ITS. 22
Figure 4. Phylogenetic tree of order Eurotiales isolated from marine plastic waste based on ML analysis of BenA. 23
Figure 5. Phylogenetic tree of genus Diaporthe isolated from marine plastic waste based on ML analysis of BenA. 24
Figure 6. Phylogenetic tree of family Didymellaceae isolated from marine plastic waste based on ML analysis of BenA. 25
Figure 7. Phylogenetic tree of genus Pestalotiopsis and Neopestalotiopsis isolated from marine plastic waste based on ML analysis of BenA. 26
Figure 8. Phylogenetic tree of genus Cladosporium isolated from marine plastic waste based on ML analysis of act. 27
Figure 9. Proportions of fungi isolated from plastic waste. 36
Figure 10. Summary of PCL agar assay results. 39
Figure 11. Boxplot of PCL-degrading ability of all tested strains with the genera detected in the present study. 45
Figure 12. Fungal species isolated from collected plastic wastes. 46