1st International and 10th National Iranian Conference on Bioinformatics
Home Accepted Papers
Exploration of Plastic Contaminated Soil Metagenome to Identify Novel Plastic Degradation Enzymes
Paper ID : 1224-ICB10
Authors:
Donya Afshar-Jahanshahi1, Kaveh Kavousi *2, Shohreh Ariaeenejad3
1پردیس بین المللی کیش دانشگاه تهران
2University of Tehran
3پژوهشگاه بیوتکنولوژی کشاورزی ایران
Abstract:
Today, all kinds of plastics are widely used in the global economy for various purposes and 350-400 milion tons are produced every year [1]. It has been shown that plastics cause adverse effects in all ecosystems and microplastics 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), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and ester-based polyurethane (PUR) [1]. Various types of enzymes have been introduced as plastic digrader, including Laccase, Cutinase, PETase and Peroxidase [1]. Laccases have been broadly applied as a multitasking biocatalyst in various industries. Also this enzymes are the most important enzymes that were introduced to degrade plastics. In this study, plastic contaminated soil samples are analyzed using metagenomics approaches including taxonomic profiling, assembly, binning, gene prediction, enzyme prediction, and 3D structure prediction to discover new microorganisms and enzymes in effective plastic degradation. Generated bins are analyzed using ECpred [2] software and unbinned samples are analyzed using Metarenz [3] software to predict laccase enzymes. Metarenz is a tool for identification target enzymes from assembled contigs. 3D structure of 86 Laccase candidates are predicted using Alphafold [4] and TMalighn tools. The resulted metagenomic sequences are further investigated by NCBI CDD [5]. Finally, sequences passed from all above stages will enter the cloning process and their degradability will be investigated in vitro.
Keywords:
Computational Metagenomics; Plastics; Degradation; Laccase; Soil;
Status : Paper Accepted (Oral Presentation)