Potential Fungi Isolated From Anti-biodegradable Chinese Medicine Residue to Degrade Lignocellulose

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine is one of the ancient medicines which is popular in Asian countries, among which the residue produced by the use of anti-biodegradables is endless, and causes significant adverse impacts on the environment. However, the high acidity of anti-biodegradable residues and some special biological activities make it difficult for microorganisms to survive, resulting in a very low degradation rate of lignocellulose in naturally stacked residues, which directly impedes the degradation of residues. We aimed to identify the fungal strains that efficiently biodegrade anti-biodegradable residue and see the possibility to improve the biodegradation of it and other agricultural wastes by co-cultivating these fungi. We isolated 302 fungal strains from anti-biodegradable residue to test hydrolysis ability. Finally, we found Coniochaeta sp., Fomitopsis sp., Nemania sp., Talaromyces sp., Phaeophlebiopsis sp. which inhabit the anti-biodegradable residues are capable of producing higher concentrations of extracellular enzymes. Synergistic fungal combinations (viz., Fomitopsis sp. + Phaeophlebiopsis sp.; Talaromyces sp. + Coniochaeta sp. + Fomitopsis sp.; Talaromyces sp. + Fomitopsis sp. + Piloderma sp. and Talaromyces sp. + Nemania sp. + Piloderma sp.) have better overall degradation effect on lignocellulose. Therefore, these fungi and their combinations have strong potential to be further developed for bioremediation and biological enzyme industrial production.

Construction of cellulose-degrading microbial consortium and evaluation of their ability to degrade spent mushroom substrate

“…The study screened 21 strains of cellulose-degrading bacteria, among which B. amyloliquefaciens (F16, F, F7) and B. velezensis (PX1) exhibited higher enzyme activity. Previous reports have confirmed that B. amyloliquefaciens and B. velezensis both exhibit strong cellulose degradation activity ( Hussain et al, 2017 ; Cheng M. et al, 2022 ). Li J. et al (2022) isolated a cellulase-producing strain, B. amyloliquefaciens DC-2, with an FPase activity of 7.31 U/mL, while the cellulose-degrading strains screened in this study exhibited high FPase activities ranging from 23.81 to 28.57 U/mL, indicating greater enzyme activity compared to strain DC-2.…”