Microplastic Degradation by Actinobacteria

Microplastic is an emerging contaminant which has negative impacts on ecosystem as well as to human health. Therefore, remediation techniques were established to mitigate this issue through microorganisms. Thus, to degrade microplastics the abundant techniques were used and one of the useful technique is biodegradation by microbes. Biodegradation of plastic is a process in which enzymes produced by bacteria, actinobacteria, fungi, yeast are utilized for degrading plastics. In recent past decades, scientists has relied on traditional isolation techniques of Actinobacteria degrading poly lactic acid (PLA). One of the potent tool to investigate the diversity of PLA-degrading microorganisms in the environment is modern molecular biology techniques. Actinobacteria have ability to degrade PLA by producing hydrolytic enzymes which promotes their growth on different polymers. Consequently, it facilitates the degradation of high molecular weight compounds into oligomers, dimers and monomers (simpler compounds). There are few species of actinobacteria Micromonospora matsumotoense, Amycolatopsis, Saccharothrix Streptomyces gougerotti and Nocardiopsis prasine are capable of degrading PLA.