Exploration of Plastic Contaminated Soil Metagenome to Identify Novel Plastic Degradation Enzymes

Today, all kinds of plastics are widely used in the global economy for various purposes and ۳۵۰-۴۰۰ miliontons are produced every year. It has been shown that plastics cause adverse effects in all ecosystems andmicroplastics make particular concerns for the health of humans and other living things on the planet earth.Existing enzymes act mainly on high molecular weight polymers such as polyethylene (PE), polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) and ester-based polyurethane (PUR). Various types of enzymes have been introduced asplastic digrader, including Laccase, Cutinase, PETase and Peroxidase. Laccases have been broadly appliedas a multitasking biocatalyst in various industries. Also this enzymes are the most important enzymes thatwere introduced to degrade plastics. In this study, plastic contaminated soil samples are analyzed usingmetagenomics approaches including taxonomic profiling, assembly, binning, gene prediction, enzymeprediction, and ۳D structure prediction to discover new microorganisms and enzymes in effective plasticdegradation. Generated bins are analyzed using ECpred software and unbinned samples are analyzed usingMetarenz software to predict laccase enzymes. Metarenz is a tool for identification target enzymes fromassembled contigs. ۳D structure of ۸۶ Laccase candidates are predicted using Alphafold and TMalighn tools.The resulted metagenomic sequences are further investigated by NCBI CDD. Finally, sequences passed fromall above stages will enter the cloning process and their degradability will be investigated in vitro.

کلیدواژه ها:

Computational Metagenomics ، Plastics ، Degradation ، Laccase ، Soil