Novel laccases for synthetic dye pollution mitigation-screening, statistical optimization and molecular...

The chemical dye industry releases dyes which reach effluent streams that increases environmental pollution with serious health hazards. Though various strategies are being used for lowering dye related pollution in water bodies, microbes especially basidiomycetes, offer strong laccase resources for degradation of chemical dyes which are otherwise recalcitrant to degradation. In the current study, white rot fungal strains were isolated and further screened for their laccase producing ability under solid state fermentation conditions. Out of 26 fungal isolates collected from 114 processed soil & wood samples when subjected to plate assay using pure guaiacol and sample chemical dyes as substrates for possible ligninolytic activity, 4 isolates were secondary screened for ligninolytic enzymes (laccase activity) under solid state fermentation. The study resulted in providing us with a novel strain of Schizophyllum commune H4-8: GCA_000143185, found to be the most promising with synthetic dye decolorization in plate assay. The laccase production was optimized using response surface methodology which predicted maximum enzyme activity as 4.7 IU/ml at pH 5.2, temperature 32° C, CuSO₄ concentration 1.34%, Yeast extract concentration 1.57%, wheat bran amount 6.6 g.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-026-04794-z.