Prathna Puri1 Suhasis Chakoborty1 Barkha Singhal*1
1School of Biotechnology, Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida (U.P.), India, Pin: 201312
Email id: barkha@gbu.ac.in, gupta.barkha@gmail.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0538-662X
Abstract
Currently, the world is facing cataclysmic impact of plastic waste conferring devastating impact on environment and climate change. The reckless utilization of plastic waste has burdened earth with variety of high molecular weight polymers such as polyurethane, polyethylene, polyvinylchloride, polystyrene, polyamide, polypropylene and poly(ethyleneterephthalate) with little degradation capacity. Though nature has its own arsenals for the degradation of plastics but its overwhelming amount leads to critical requirement of various scientific and technological approaches for their effective management. Among various thermal, physiochemical, thermochemical approaches biodegradation is the most sustainable approach for alleviation of plastic waste. A variety of microorganisms and their secreted enzymes have been credited with plastic degrading ability but their efficiency is quite limited and not much explored for commercial purpose. The potential of unseen majority as unculturable microbes holds tremendous potential for plastic degradation that can be done through metagenomics. The elucidation of microbial community structure and mining of genes enzymes responsible for plastic degradation will definitely help in finding efficient bio-workflow for the biological management of plastic waste. Therefore, the present article forays a technological glance of metagenomic correlating with plastic degrading aspects.
Keywords: metagenomics, plastic waste, microbial community analysis, biodegradation
