Novel Fungal Enzymes in Environmental Remediation (original) (raw)

Abstract: Industrial revolution vis-a-vis expansion has been proved to be a bane in boon for human civilization. Albeit, with great leaps in terms of industrial automation our life-style pattern has improved, but silently also convoluted the sustenance of biomes on this earth. Industrial by-products and effluents insipidly pollute all the necessary and essential parameters of growth for the entire living world; as a result bringing forth intolerable desolations to survive. Increasing discharge and improper management of gaseous, liquid and solid industrial wastes have emerged to be a great threat issuing burning concerns amongst the scientific communities over their economic treatment and safe disposal. Fancifully amidst these threats, bioremediation has been an emerging and expanding area of environmental biotechnology and is considered to be the application of biological processes to the treatment of different pollutants. The diverse array of metabolic versatility of microorganisms emphasizes their practical applicability to all bioremediation processes. Till today, almost all the work done has been focused on organic pollutants, although a great number/group of microorganisms do select solid and liquid wastes, natural materials and inorganic pollutants such as toxic metals and metalloids to transform or detoxify into simpler conjugates. However, the majority of the scientific research methodologies, developed till date employed/exploited bacteria and there is a dearth of attitude to find the potential roles, involvements and possibilities of fungi for environmental bioremediation. There are voluminously-growing pertinent evidences available regarding the metabolic and morphological versatility of different groups of fungi and the fundamental importance of fungi, as decomposers, in the environment with regard to decomposition and transformation of both organic and inorganic xenobiotics with concomitant recycling of elements, which is of appropriate relevance in modern-day waste management. In recent years, a lot of effort has been in progress on the development and optimization of bioremediation processes with judicious emphasis on the study of their enzyme systems involved in biodegradation of industrial pollutants. In laboratories, many new strains have been identified, brought to cultural practices and their enzymes of interest have been isolated, purified and characterized. In this article, we have tried to cover the latest developments on different fungal enzyme systems of interest, their low molecular mass mediators and their potential use for bioremediation of industrial pollutants. These developments together with the growing importance of fungi as model systems in eukaryotic cell and molecular biology, physiology and biochemistry, provides the rationale for this work. Key Words: Basidiomycetes, Bioremediation, Biotransformation, Laccase., Lignin peroxidase, Manganese peroxidase, Wood rotting fungi, Xenobiotics,