Degradation of Petroleum-plastics like Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) is a budding challenge due to increasing white pollution. The present investigation has focused the aspect through microbial assisted biodegradation. Various indigenous microorganisms were isolated from collected municipal landfill soil. Growth medium enriched with 0.2 g of LDPE powder was used to screen the soil bacteria with biodegradation potential. The screened bacteria were subjected to biodegradation assay in presence of LDPE sheets in growth medium. Four strains gave 5%, 17.8%, 0.9% and 0.6% degradation rate based on weight loss in the conducted in vitro assay for four days. The maximum degraded sheet was analyzed through Scanning Electron Microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and Thermogravimetry, taking undegraded LDPE sheet as control. Results illustrated one-step weight loss with control and three-step weight loss with test. Thus, it proved the efficacy of isolated strain. The strain identification was carried out by genomic DNA isolation followed by PCR and 16S rRNA sequencing. Genotypic identification revealed the bacterium as Pseudomonas citronellolis. BLAST gave a similarity with the database of 96%, thus phylogenetic assessment clarified the bacterium as a novel strain. The isolate was named as Pseudomonas citronellolis EMBS027 and sequence was deposited as LDPE degrading species, in GenBank with accession number KF361478.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2193-1801-3-497) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Lead stands second among the deadly heavy metal pollutants owing to the incompetent mechanism possessed by the human body for its removal. A polymeric hydrogel in the form of composite was prepared using acrylic acid (monomer) and novel nanofiller that possess super adsorbent properties with restricted gel seepage into flowing ionic liquid. The filler used is an adsorbent which is biocompatible, biodegradable, economical, abundant, non-hazardous and easy to synthesize. The invariably porous nanofiller, the Nanobentonite(clay), was synthesized using ion exchange reaction by creating acidic environment for accelerated dispersion with exfoliation by CTAB to enhance cation exchange capacity. NanobentoFnite was capable of removing >97% lead ion in batch adsorption study and followed pseudo-second order kinetic model. Freundlich isotherm suggested a removal capacity of ~20 mg/g. Thus, the successfully experimented adsorbent was implicated as filler to form polyacrylic acid nanoclay hydrogel polymerized in ultrasonic bath. The amount of filler was varied from 0.25 to 2 wt% to get 94% removal, analyzed using ICP-OES. The prepared adsorbents were characterized before and after adsorption using TEM, FESEM, XRD, FTIR and DSC to understand the structural changes and metal-sorbent interaction. Thus, the novel nanosorbent/composite are promiscuous and competent in terms of availability, reusability and longevity to remove heavy metal ions.

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The ever increasing potentialities of petroleum plastics with respect to lack of degradation, inability to recycle and the toxic effects of incineration, has urged to design biodegradable polymers, often called Green Plastics. These biodegradable plastics are promiscuous due to their analogous properties and environmental friendliness. Bacterial factories and Plants being their natural sources for production made them a promiscuous solution. Fermentation is the procedural technology used with certain fillers that are known to enhance the chemo-mechanical properties. The process at the industrial level is not well accepted due to the certain lacunas. The review mainly focuses to assimilate a few researches that implicate the best known process parameters for Batch, Fed-batch, Continuous and Two stage modes of fermentation without compromising the downstream processing at commercial level.

Nanoparticles have entered the scientific world with varied potential applications, of which studies are often conducted in relation to pharmaceuticals as potent drug delivery systems. They perk up pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. But, in the era of innovation the studies have revealed a novel side of nanoparticles that has shown their unique ability in enhancement of polymer degradation. Petroleum-plastics like Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) being an unavoidable necessity, has crossed high levels of environmental pollution due to its poor waste disposal and thus, calls for better ways of its degradation management. The conventional methods have shown a limited degradation with environmental constraints which have been overcome by microbial and enzymatic process of biodegradation. Nanoparticles influence the growth profiles of LDPE degrading microorganisms to augment the biodegradation rate, a major conundrum faced. The review primarily focuses on researches related to the degradation aspect where nanoparticles have acted as enhancers of biodegradation.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) is an outrageous disease worldwide. l-Asparagine (l-Asn) and l-Glutamine (l-Gln) deamination play a crucial role in ALL treatment. Role of Elspar® (l-asparaginase from Escherichia coli) in regulation of l-Asn and l-Gln has been confirmed by the other researchers through experimental studies. Therapeutic research against ALL remained elusive with the lack of information on molecular interactions of Elspar® with amino acid substrates. In the present study, using different docking tools binding cavities, key residues in binding and ligand binding mechanisms were identified. For the apo state enzyme and ligand bound state complexes, MD simulations were performed. Trajectory analysis for 30 ns run confirmed the kinship of l-Asn with l-asparaginase enzyme in the dynamic system with less stability in comparison to l-Gln docked complex. Overall findings strongly supported the bi-functional nature of the enzyme drug. A good number of conformational changes were observed with 1NNS structure due to ligand binding. Results of present study give much more information on structural and functional aspects of E. coli l-asparaginase upon the interaction with its ligands which may be useful in designing effective therapeutics for ALL.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13205-015-0339-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Indiscriminate application of pesticides like chlorpyrifos, diazinon, or malathion contaminate the soil in addition has being unsafe often it has raised severe health concerns. Conversely, microorganisms like Trichoderma, Aspergillus and Bacteria like Rhizobium Bacillus, Azotobacter, Flavobacterium etc have evolved that are endowed with degradation of pesticides aforementioned to non-toxic products. The current study pitches into identification of a novel species of Flavobacterium bacteria capable to degrade the Organophosphorous pesticides. The bacterium was isolated from agricultural soil collected from Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, India. The samples were serially diluted and the aliquots were incubated for a suitable time following which the suspected colony was subjected to 16S rDNA sequencing. The sequence thus obtained was aligned pairwise against Flavobacterium species, which resulted in identification of novel specie of Flavobacterium later named as EMBS0145, the sequence of which was deposited in in GenBank with accession number JN794045.

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