Isolation and Screening of Cellulolytic Filamentous Fungi

Abstract

Filamentous fungi are among the microorganisms that most efficiently are able to degrade plant biomass by secreting cell wall-degrading enzymes and they are therefore used extensively in the industry as workhorses for the production of enzymes, including cellulases for the use in second-generation biorefinery concepts. Fungi are therefore of interest both as resources for the search of novel cellulolytic enzymes and for production of enzymes and enzyme cocktails, which also can be carried out on-site using cheap lignocellulosic substrates for growth and enzyme production. Fungi can be isolated from different environmental niches, such as soil, compost, decaying wood, decaying plant material, building materials, and different foodstuffs. Selective isolation can be carried out using simple cellulosic or complex plant material in the media. In this chapter, methods used for the isolation and screening of cellulolytic fungi isolated from different ecological niches are presented. The screening assay presented in the chapter is an easy semiquantitative high-throughput agar plate screening method using azurine-cross-linked (AZCL) cellulose substrates.

Facile Cellulase Immobilisation on Bioinspired Silica

“…Loading efficiency (%) and relative activity (%) for both cellulose adsorbed and entrapped. Reference [64,73,74] are cited in Supplementary Materials.…”

Potential of marine sponge-derived fungi in the aquaculture system

“…On the last day of the incubation, CMC plates and soluble agar were flooded with a 10 mL Gram's iodine stain for 10 min (Colonia and Junior 2014). The amylase activity was determined by the starch hydrolysis, which can be seen in the presence of hydrolysis zone around the fungal plate colony (Lübeck and Lübeck 2018). The skimmed milk agar (SMA) plate was used to determine the extracellular protease production (Sharma et al 2015).…”

Impact of pretreatment severity on fungal cellulase production on sugarcane bagasse substrate

“…Cellulase-producing fungi were isolated from a municipal solid waste dumpsite, a saw dust mill, and a sugarcane plantation in Ilorin, Nigeria, using the spread plate technique. Soil samples were serially diluted and 0.1 mL aliquots of appropriate dilutions were plated on sterile Czapek-sugarcane bagasse (SCB) medium, modified from Lübeck and Lübeck [20], with the following composition (per litre): SCB 2 g, NaNO 3 3 g, KH 2 PO 4 1 g, KCl 0.5 g, MgSO 4 •H 2 O 0.5 g, FeSO 4 •7H 2 O 0.01 g, agar 15 g, Tween-80 1.5 µL, and 1 mL trace elements solution (ZnSO 4 •7H 2 O 0.01 g/L, CuSO 4 •7H 2 O 0.05 g/L in 100 mL water). Initial medium pH was 6.5.…”