Outcome: Complete degradation of pesticides using laccase enzyme
Description: Applying enzymatic action, for degrading or transforming the pesticide affected soil and water is an innovative treatment technique for eradication of chemicals present in it. These chemicals pose a great threat to the environment as much of these chemicals end up reaching the wrong places. Especially, the chances for these chemicals to enter the food web and behave like a xenobiotic is very high.The enzyme of our interest is laccase, which belongs to copper-containing oxidases that catalyze the reduction of molecular oxygen to water, with the concomitant oxidation of a substrate, typically phenolic compounds.The range of substrates for laccase can be expanded to compounds more difficult to oxidize or non-phenolic substrates by using redox mediators. In this work, we are making use of the in vitro and in silico techniques to find out the efficacy of laccase against selected pesticides.
