https://pages.htgaa.org/2026a/maria-jose-perez-crespo/projects/individual-final-project/documentation/index.htmlThe Plastisphere Code: Decoding How Microbes Stick to Synthetic Polymers Section 1: Abstract Microplastic (MP) pollution is one of the most important environmental problems today. Recent studies have shown that bacteria can colonize plastic surfaces forming biofilms known as the “plastisphere”, which behave very differently from surrounding microbial communities (Di Pippo et al., 2020; Zhai et al., 2023). The impact of this colonization is not only ecological: plastisphere biofilms can act as vectors for pathogens and antibiotic-resistance genes, with Pseudomonas and Bacillus often identified as dominant hosts of resistance genes in these environments (Li et al., 2025). In addition to bacteria, more than 200 fungal species have also been reported to colonize and degrade synthetic plastics, showing that microbial adhesion to polymers is a broad and still poorly understood phenomenon (Ekanayaka et al., 2022). At the molecular level, bacterial attachment to synthetic polymers is largely mediated by surface proteins such as curli amyloids (CsgA) and other adhesins, but the structural and physicochemical features that determine why specific proteins bind plastic surfaces are still not well understood (Sano et al., 2023).Hugoen