Plastic accumulation has become a serious environmental threat. Mitigation of plastic is important to save the ecosystem of our planet. With current research being focused on microbial degradation of plastics, microbes with the potential to degrade polyethylene were isolated in this study. In vitro studies were performed to define the correlation between the degrading capability of the isolates and laccase, a common oxidase enzyme. Instrumental analyses were used to evaluate morphological and chemical modifications in polyethylene, which demonstrated a steady onset of the degradation process in case of both isolates, Pseudomonas aeruginosa O1-P and Bacillus cereus O2-B. To understand the efficiency of laccase in degrading other common polymers, in silico approach was employed, for which 3D structures of laccase in both the isolates were constructed via homology modeling and molecular docking was performed, revealing that the enzyme laccase can be exploited to degrade a wide range of polymers.

Graphical abstract

中文翻译：

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蜡样芽孢杆菌 O2-B 和铜绿假单胞菌 O1-P 漆酶与聚合物生物降解的关联：体外到计算机模拟方法

塑料堆积已成为严重的环境威胁。减少塑料污染对于拯救我们星球的生态系统非常重要。由于当前的研究主要集中在塑料的微生物降解上，因此在本研究中分离出具有降解聚乙烯潜力的微生物。进行了体外研究以确定分离株的降解能力与漆酶（一种常见的氧化酶）之间的相关性。仪器分析用于评估聚乙烯的形态和化学修饰，这表明在两种分离物、铜绿假单胞菌O1-P 和蜡样芽孢杆菌的情况下，降解过程稳定开始O2-B。为了了解漆酶降解其他常见聚合物的效率，采用了计算机方法，通过同源建模构建了两种分离物中漆酶的 3D 结构，并进行了分子对接，揭示了漆酶酶可用于降解范围广泛的聚合物。

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