Characteristics of White-rot Fungus Phlebia brevispora TMIC33929 and Its Growth-Promoting Bacterium Enterobacter sp. TN3W-14 in the Decolorization of Dye-Contaminated Water

White-rot fungus Phlebia floridensis ITM 12: Laccase production, oxidoreductase profile, and hydrogen-peroxide independent activity

Phlebia genus is a relevant group of fungi with a crucial role in numerous ecosystems. In tropical and subtropical areas this genus allows the efficient degradation of lignin and carbon recovery; however, the majority of these fungal species remain undiscovered. The main purpose of this work was to determine the enzymatic activity of extracellular proteins of a novel Phlebia floridensis strain isolated in Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The results that are reported here demonstrate that the soluble protein extract of P. floridensis can degrade a broad spectrum of recalcitrant compounds. This induced protein extract is able to modify not only phenolic and nonphenolic compounds, but also anthroquinone dyes, even without the addition of exogenous hydrogen peroxide. Using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), we were able to identify a novel chloroperoxidase in enzymatic extract. As far as we know, this is the first report about the presence of this type of enzyme in the Phlebia genus.

Bibliometric analysis of global research on white rot fungi biotechnology for environmental application

In recent years, white rot fungi (WRFs) have received tremendous attention as a biotechnological tool for environmental pollution control. In order to systematically and comprehensively describe the progress, trends, and hotspots of WRF biotechnology in the field of environmental pollution control, the 3967 related publications from 2003 to 2020 were collected from Web of Science Core Collection database, and the bibliometric characteristics including publication output, country, institution, journal, author, citation frequency, h-index, and research focus were evaluated by using Excel 2007, CiteSpace V, and VOSviewer. The results indicated that the number of research publications increased rapidly before 2009, but after that, the number of publications fluctuated in a certain range. China and USA were the most productive countries and the most active country in international cooperation. In this field, most authors tend to cooperate within a small group. The journal and subject category with the largest number of publications are "International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation" and "Biotechnology Applied Microbiology", respectively. The analysis of high-frequency keywords revealed that "laccase", "biodegradation", "decolorization", and "Phanerochaete chrysosporium" were the most cited terms among all publications. The pretreatment of biomass waste, decolorization of dye wastewater, and bioremediation of polluted environment are the key research directions of WRF biotechnology. Finally, the frontier topics and active authors in this research field were identified using burst detection. We believe that this bibliometric study provides a comprehensive and systematic overview and promoted the future cooperative research and knowledge exchange in this field of WRF biotechnology for environmental applications.