Novel putative PETase candidates from metagenomic mining of Ebrié lagoon and Kassembié lake, Côte d'Ivoire
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Plastic pollution threatens aquatic ecosystems in Côte d’Ivoire, yet their microbial potential for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) degradation remains poorly characterized. We applied shotgun metagenomics to five samples from Biétry bay, an urban site in the Ébrié lagoon, and Kassembié lake, a low-impact reference site. MetaPhlAn4 detected 131 site-specific, uncharacterized species-level genome bins, including 76 found only at Biétry. Functional annotation of the non-redundant gene catalogue identified 15,860 hydrolase genes and 195 genes assigned to the CE1 carbohydrate esterase family, used here as a proxy for general ester-cleaving potential. Structural prediction with ColabFold (AlphaFold2) and comparison with IsPETase using TM-align prioritized four novel PETase-like candidates, BietPETase1–4. These findings reveal under-explored microbial and enzymatic diversity in Ivorian aquatic ecosystems and provide candidates for experimental validation in PET-bioremediation research.
