Publications by authors named "Lebin Thomas"

Global interest in mushroom farming techniques has grown in the last few years. Despite not making up a large amount of the human diet at the moment, the nutritional worth of mushrooms has prompted their usage. The three main segments of the global mushroom industry are wild, culinary (edible), and medicinal mushrooms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cellulolytic actinobacterium, Promicromonospora sp. VP111 concomitantly produced cellulases (CELs), xylanase and pectinase when grown on commercial cellulose and untreated agricultural lignocellulosic residues (wheat straw and sugarcane bagasse). Secreted CELs hydrolyzed (enhanced with Co ion) multiple cellulosic substrates, including sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (Na-CMC), Whatman filter paper no.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chromium (Cr) compounds are usually toxins and exist abundantly in two different forms, Cr(VI) and Cr(III), in nature. Their contamination in any environment is a major problem. Many extreme environments including cold climate, warm climate, acidic environment, basic/alkaline environment, hypersaline environment, radiation, drought, high pressure, and anaerobic conditions have accumulated elevated Cr contamination.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Nitrogen occurs as inert and inaccessible dinitrogen gaseous form (N ) in the atmosphere. Biological nitrogen fixation is a chief process that makes this dinitrogen (N ) accessible and bioavailable in the form of ammonium (NH ) ions. The key organisms to fix nitrogen are certain prokaryotes, called diazotrophs either in the free-living form or establishing significant mutual relationships with a variety of plants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chromium (Cr) (VI) is a well-known toxin to all types of biological organisms. Over the past few decades, many investigators have employed numerous bioprocesses to neutralize the toxic effects of Cr(VI). One of the main process for its treatment is bioreduction into Cr(III).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The present investigation deals with the characterisation of three As-resistant bacteria, Bacillus aryabhattai strain VPS1, Bacillus licheniformis strain VPS6 and Sporosarcina thermotolerans strain VPS7 isolated from the rhizosphere of a contaminated paddy field in Chakdaha, Nadia, West Bengal, India. Two strains, VPS6 and VPS7 showed ureolytic activity, which can be used for microbial-induced calcite precipitation of As as a bioremediation option. However, As reduction and oxidation capacities were not reported in any of these bacteria.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In the present study, a lead (Pb)-resistant bacterium, Staphylococcus hominis strain AMB-2 was isolated from Mandoli industrial area, Delhi and selected for heavy metal biosorption considering multiple heavy metal resistance. In the batch experiment, both living and dead biomasses of strain AMB-2 showed biosorption of Pb and cadmium (Cd) in single and binary systems as analyzed through Inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry. Living biomass exhibited more biosorption of metals than dead biomass in both single and binary systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bacteria are important sources of cellulases with various industrial and biotechnological applications. In view of this, a non-hemolytic bacterial strain, tolerant to various environmental pollutants (heavy metals and organic solvents), showing high cellulolytic index (7.89) was isolated from cattle shed soil and identified as Bacillus sp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The cellulases from different cellulolytic organisms have evolutionary relationships, which range from single-celled prokaryotes to the complex eukaryotes of the living world. This in silico analysis revealed the presence of a conserved cellulase domain along with evolutionary relationships among cellulases from several species of Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. The amino acid sequences of cellulases from Archaea and Bacteria showed closer identity with their domain or phylum members that provided insights into convergent and divergent evolution of cellulases from other enzymes with different substrate specificities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

High costs of natural cellulose utilization and cellulase production are an industrial challenge. In view of this, an isolated soil actinobacterium identified as Promicromonospora sp. VP111 showed potential for production of major cellulases (CMCase, FPase, and β-glucosidase) utilizing untreated agricultural lignocellulosic wastes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A novel aerobic, non-motile, rod-shaped, catalase- and oxidase-positive bacterial strain, designated UKS3T, was isolated from garden soil, and subjected to polyphasic taxonomic analysis. Strain UKS3T formed whitish, viscous colonies on nutrient agar and was Gram-staining negative. Phylogenetic analysis, based on 16S rRNA gene sequence, showed that maximum pairwise similarity occurs with representatives of the genus Myroides.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bacteria exist in a wide range of habitats ranging from psychrophilic through mesophilic to thermophilic. These different habitats have distinct environmental restriction for their existence. These microorganisms evolve themselves to survive in a specific habitat through the phenotypic and genotypic changes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF