TY - JOUR

T1 - Molecular docking and metagenomics assisted mitigation of microplastic pollution

AU - Parida, Dinesh

AU - Katare, Konica

AU - Ganguly, Atmaadeep

AU - Chakraborty, Disha

AU - Konar, Oisi

AU - Nogueira, Regina

AU - Bala, Kiran

N1 - Funding Information: The authors are thankful to DAAD for the LUH-IITI mobility grant (A new passage to India) and IIT Indore for providing the necessary support. The authors acknowledge the University Grant Commission (UGC) India for fellowship support to Mr. Dinesh Parida. The authors are thankful to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore for providing the necessary support.

PY - 2024/3

Y1 - 2024/3

N2 - Microplastics, tiny, flimsy, and direct progenitors of principal and subsidiary plastics, cause environmental degradation in aquatic and terrestrial entities. Contamination concerns include irrevocable impacts, potential cytotoxicity, and negative health effects on mortals. The detection, recovery, and degradation strategies of these pollutants in various biota and ecosystems, as well as their impact on plants, animals, and humans, have been a topic of significant interest. But the natural environment is infested with several types of plastics, all having different chemical makeup, structure, shape, and origin. Plastic trash acts as a substrate for microbial growth, creating biofilms on the plastisphere surface. This colonizing microbial diversity can be glimpsed with meta-genomics, a culture-independent approach. Owing to its comprehensive description of microbial communities, genealogical evidence on unconventional biocatalysts or enzymes, genomic correlations, evolutionary profile, and function, it is being touted as one of the promising tools in identifying novel enzymes for the degradation of polymers. Additionally, computational tools such as molecular docking can predict the binding of these novel enzymes to the polymer substrate, which can be validated through in vitro conditions for its environmentally feasible applications. This review mainly deals with the exploration of metagenomics along with computational tools to provide a clearer perspective into the microbial potential in the biodegradation of microplastics. The computational tools due to their polymathic nature will be quintessential in identifying the enzyme structure, binding affinities of the prospective enzymes to the substrates, and foretelling of degradation pathways involved which can be quite instrumental in the furtherance of the plastic degradation studies.

AB - Microplastics, tiny, flimsy, and direct progenitors of principal and subsidiary plastics, cause environmental degradation in aquatic and terrestrial entities. Contamination concerns include irrevocable impacts, potential cytotoxicity, and negative health effects on mortals. The detection, recovery, and degradation strategies of these pollutants in various biota and ecosystems, as well as their impact on plants, animals, and humans, have been a topic of significant interest. But the natural environment is infested with several types of plastics, all having different chemical makeup, structure, shape, and origin. Plastic trash acts as a substrate for microbial growth, creating biofilms on the plastisphere surface. This colonizing microbial diversity can be glimpsed with meta-genomics, a culture-independent approach. Owing to its comprehensive description of microbial communities, genealogical evidence on unconventional biocatalysts or enzymes, genomic correlations, evolutionary profile, and function, it is being touted as one of the promising tools in identifying novel enzymes for the degradation of polymers. Additionally, computational tools such as molecular docking can predict the binding of these novel enzymes to the polymer substrate, which can be validated through in vitro conditions for its environmentally feasible applications. This review mainly deals with the exploration of metagenomics along with computational tools to provide a clearer perspective into the microbial potential in the biodegradation of microplastics. The computational tools due to their polymathic nature will be quintessential in identifying the enzyme structure, binding affinities of the prospective enzymes to the substrates, and foretelling of degradation pathways involved which can be quite instrumental in the furtherance of the plastic degradation studies.

KW - Biodegradation

KW - Enzymatic degradation

KW - Metagenomics

KW - Microplastics

KW - Molecular docking

KW - Plastisphere

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183290874&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.141271

DO - 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.141271

M3 - Review article

AN - SCOPUS:85183290874

VL - 351

JO - CHEMOSPHERE

JF - CHEMOSPHERE

SN - 0045-6535

M1 - 141271

ER -