Today, environmental contamination is a big concern for both developing and developed countries. The primary sources of contamination of land, water, and air are extensive industrialization and intense agricultural activities. Various traditional methods are available for the treatment of different pollutants in the environment, but all have some limitations. Due to this, an alternative method is required which is effective and less toxic and provides better outcomes. Nanomaterials have attracted a lot of interest in terms of environmental remediation. Because of their huge surface area and related high reactivity, nanomaterials perform better in environmental clean-up than other conventional approaches. They can be modified for specific uses to provide novel features. Due to the large surface-area-to-volume ratio and the presence of a larger number of reactive sites, nanoscale materials can be extremely reactive. These characteristics allow for higher interaction with contaminants, leading to a quick reduction of contaminant concentration. In the present review, an overview of different nanomaterials that are potential in the remediation of environmental pollutants has been discussed.

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Second generation alcoholic biofuels synthesis from lignocellulosic biomass (LB) consists three steps viz., pre-treatment, detoxification, and fermentation. This dilute acid pre-treatment process generates several compounds like acids, aldehydes, ketones, oxides and their phenolic derivatives that are potential inhibitors of some of the crucial enzymes in the metabolic pathway of ABE fermentation. With application of hybrid quantum mechanics/ molecular mechanics (QM/MM) approach, our aim is to discern the molecular mechanism of inhibition of key AADs across solventogenic species. The objectives of present study are: (1) identification and homology modelling of key AADs; (2) validation, quality assessment and physiochemical characterization of the modelled enzymes; (3) identification, construction and optimization of chemical structure of potent microbial inhibitors in LH; and (4) applications of hybrid QM/MM simulations to profile the molecular interactions between microbial inhibitors and key AADs. Our computational investigation has revealed various important facets of inhibition of the AAD enzymes, which could guide structural biologist in designing efficient and robust enzymes. Moreover, our methodology also provides a general framework which could applied for deciphering the molecular mechanism of inhibition behaviour of other enzymes.