This paper assesses that new disposal technique should be adopted for the degradation of polymers and further research is required for the economical production of biodegradable plastics along with their enzymatic degradation.
Our daily life needs depend on plastics, as they are cheap and durable, so they become the most commonly used synthetic chemical products. But from an environmentalist's point of view, a major concern related to these plastics is their non-biodegradable nature. Driven by growing demand to search for sustainable solutions to dispose off generating huge volume of synthetic plastic wastes, shifted the mind of researcher towards the use of biodegradable plastics which can be completely disposed-off by microbial enzymatic degradation. These biodegradable plastics or "bioplastics" are also synthesized by microbes under certain stressed environmental conditions out of which poly(R-3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) is the most ubiquitous and best known representatives of polyhydroxyalkanoate family. The PHB is most intensively used for the innovative biomedical applications owing to suitable combination of biocompatibility, transport characteristics, and mechanical properties. These challenging aspects of PHB can be used for designing of novel medical devices, in tissue engineering, and for systematic sustained drug delivery. Lots of research reports on PHB degrading enzymes and their producing microorganisms including biochemical aspects are available but in scattered form. So this review highlighted all the relevant information of PHB and PHB-degrading enzymes starting with basic classification, synthesis, mechanism, and applications that are environment friendly and are of public interest.
The sheath blight disease of rice caused by Rhizoctonia solani is widely prevalent and one of the most destructive diseases, affecting rice cultivation and loss worldwide. In the present study, a set of twenty Bacillus isolates from saline soil of Uttar Pradesh were tested for their biocontrol activity against R. solani with the aim to obtain a potential strain for the control of sheath blight disease toward ecofriendly and sustainable agriculture. The results of dual‐culture assay and scanning electron microscopic studies showed that the strain RH5 exhibited significant antagonistic activity (84.41%) against the fungal pathogen R. solani. On the basis of 16S rDNA sequencing analysis, the potential biocontrol strain RH5 was identified as Bacillus subtilis. Furthermore, the strain RH5 was characterized by different plant growth‐promoting (PGP) activities and induction of defense‐related enzymes in rice plants against R. solani. The strain RH5 posses various PGP attributes (indole acetic acid, siderophore, hydrogen cyanide production and phosphate, Zn, K solubility), hydrolytic enzymatic (chitinase, protease, cellulase, xylanase) activity, and presence of antimicrobial peptide biosynthetic genes (bacylisin, surfactin, and fengycin), which support the strain for efficient colonization of hyphae and its inhibition. Finally, the results of the greenhouse study confirmed that strain RH5 significantly increased plant growth and triggered resistance in rice plants through the production of defense‐related antioxidant enzymes.
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