Ability of marine-derived fungi isolated from polluted saline environment for enzymatic hydrocarbon remediation.

Marine-derived fungi have attracted much attention due to their ability to present a new biosynthetic diversity. About 50 fungal isolates were obtained from Tunisian Mediterranean seawater and then screened for the presence of lignin-peroxidase (LiP), manganese-dependent peroxidase (MnP), and laccase (Lac) activities. The results obtained from both qualitative and quantitative assays showed that four of marine fungi isolates had a high potential to produce lignin-degrading enzymes. They were characterized taxonomically by a molecular method, based on international spacer (ITS) rDNA sequence analysis, as Chaetomium jodhpurense (MH667651.1), Chaetomium maderasense (MH665977.1), Paraconiothyrium variabile (MH667653.1), and Phoma betae (MH667655.1) which have been reported as producers of ligninolytic enzyme in the literature. The enzymatic activities and culture conditions were optimized using a Fractional Factorial design (2 7- 4). Then, fungal strains were incubated with the addition of 1% of crude oil in 50% of seawater for 25 days to evaluate their abilities to simultaneously degrade hydrocarbon compounds and to produce ligninolytic enzymes. The strain P. variabile exhibited the highest crude oil degradation rate (48.3%). Significant production of ligninolytic enzymes was recorded during the degradation process, which reached 2730 U/L for the MnP, 410 U/L for LiP, and 168.5 U/L for Lac. The FTIR and GC-MS analysis confirmed that the isolates rapidly biodegrade crude oil under ecological and economic conditions.