ENZYME-BASED BIODEGRADATION OF HAZARDOUS POLLUTANTS - AN OVERVIEW

There has always been a paramount concern over the widespread occurrences of various pollutant types, around the globe. With ever increasing scientific knowledge, socio-economic awareness, human health problems and ecological apprehensions, people are more concerned about the widespread environmental pollutants. Thus, the occurrences of newly identified pollutants so-called emerging pollutants - EPs or emerging contaminants - ECs in our main water bodies is of continued and burning concern worldwide. The undesirable EPs/ECs are being discharged knowingly/unknowingly with/without partial treatments into the aquatic environments that pose serious health issues and affect the whole living ecosystem. So far various approaches have been developed for the degradation of environmental pollutants to decrease their impact on the environment and are divided into three broad categories i.e. (1) physical, (2) chemical and (3) biological. Based on the literature evidence, many previous or ongoing studies have focused on contaminants degradation potentialities of the above mentioned three possible categories. However, the experimental evidence is lacking to enable specific predictions about EPs/ECs mechanistic degradation fate across various in-practice systems. This study overviews the biological degradation at large and enzyme-based degradation of hazardous pollutants in particular. Towards the end, the novel characteristics and unique enzyme system of White Rot Fungi (WRF) are also discussed to present their potentialities and implementation against a broader spectrum of EPs/ECs.