CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background
Bioremediation is the process of microorganisms usage in degrading the contaminants in environment which can be carried out in situ . The microorganisms used could be bacteria or fungi. Fungal bioremediation or called as mycoremediation, fungi usage to degrade or remove contaminants and pollutant in environment . This remediation had emerged as the economical method in pollutants treatment and gives harmless effect towards environment and human health. Bioremediation process involves in microbial enzymatic activities in order to degrade or remove the pollutant . Bioremediation nowadays has became commercial technology especially in industry since it beneficial are cost-effective, easy to implement and minimal ecological impacts compared to physical treatment such as incineration. Tata Energy Research Institute stated that the economics of remediation by using bioremediation cost $20 $200 per ton of soil whereas incineration will cost $400 $1,200 per ton of soil. . High demand on clean water keep increasing for the industry, household and also agriculture in concern of health . However, due to eutrophication, water supply had polluted with toxic cyanobacterial. Eutrophication is defined as well-feed with rich inorganic nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen are present in water produced by accumulated dead organism, human activities such as wastewater from industrial and erosion . Water temperatures generally will be at range 15C
until 30C with pH between 6 and 9 . The enrichment of nutrients in the water will lead to accelerated the algal blooms and excessive growth of the algal will produce undesirable condition to the aquatic life and also towards the water quality. The disrupted environments will cause unbalanced food web which leads to high biomass of phytoplankton and oxygen depletion at the bottom of water. European Environment Agency stated that the nitrogen pollutants is mainly from agricultural land which from year 1950 until 2000, fertilizer used is mineral nitrogen base that had increased from 1 million tons to 9 10 million tons. This is not included the animal waste which contain nitrogen that increased to nine million tons. The nitrogen pressure on environment had reached 18 million tons from only agricultural sector on 2002. Phosphorus is stated runoff from households and industry mainly. The usage of phosphorus-based detergents and industry production that keep increasing had been resulted in greater nutrient-rich wastewater . Cyanobacteria which the algae that bloom due to eutrophication is known in producing potent toxins which cause harm to human and animal health. Tragic death reported in Caruaru, Brazil, in 1996 as 60 peoples died due to contaminated dialysis water by cyanobacterial toxins. The blue-green algae could grow in freshwater and marine environments . It produces several toxins such as neurotoxins, hepatotoxins. Neurotoxins consists of anatoxins and saxitoxins. Anatoxins is reported not commonly found and had been identified found in cysanobacteria in Northen Hemisphere. Saxitoxins is found in marine environement. This toxic will cause human fatalities when consume. Hepatotoxins
is cyclic peptides including microcystins and nodularin. Microcystins is the most frequently found with cyclic heptapeptides. This microcystins produced from Microcystis aeruginosa, Anabaenopsis and Hapalosiphon . Microcystins produced consists of seven amino acids: cyclo-(D-Ala1-X2-D-MeAsp3Z4-Adda5-D-Glu6-Mdha7) Microcystins could be distinguished based on the amino
acid position at X2 and Z4. The nomenclature of microcystin depending on the variable amino acids that exist on the structure, for example microcystin-LR consists of Leucine (L) at X2 position and Arginine (R) at Z4 position. There are more than 70 different microcystins variants such as Microcystin-LA, microcystinRR, and microcystin-LF. However, microcystin-LR is the most common toxin produced and exist in drinking water . Bioremediation which is simple, low cost and effective technology reported could be used in order to treat microcystin-LR present in water. The linearized of cyclic hepatotoxin by microbial enzyme will result in degradration of the toxic to harmless molecule. According to , Sphingopyxis sp. C-1 able to degrade microcystinLR with present of mlrA enzyme from mlrA homolog gene that was conserved in the bacteria. stated that Sphingomonas sp. NV-3 able to degrade [Dha7] MC-LR and MC-LR with encoding of four types of genes that are mlrA, mlrB, mlrC, mlrD that encode four putative enzymes.
1.2
Research Scope
This study was carried on based on mycoremediation concept by using fungi to degrade toxin cyanobacteria that is mycocystins-LR which exist in water. Two different fungi were used in this study, Aspegillus niger and Tricoderma sp. for the microcystins-LR degradation with two different concentrations. The reason of using two different fungi is because to determine which fungi will show better degradation of microcystins-LR. Whereas the parameter of different concentrations used in order to determine the degradation ability of fungi towards microcystinsLR stated by World Health Organization (WHO) which is 1.0 g/L in drinking water. The degradation of mycocystins-LR was analyzed by using Spectrophotometr UV-vis. 1.3 Objectives
The objectives of this study are as follows: 1. To analyze the degradation of microcystins-LR by using fungi as
mycoremediation process. 2. To compare the degradation ability of two different fungi, that are A.
Niger and Tricoderma sp. towards microcystins-LR. 3. To determine the ability of fungi to degrade microsystins-LR above than
concentration allowed by WHO.
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