DOCKING STUDIES: IN SILICO ANALYSIS OF POLYSTYRENE DEGRADING BACTERIAL ENZYMES

Abstract

Since its popularization, there has been a rapid increase in usage of plastic products over the years. Pollution caused by plastic has become a global concern in today’s era. Plastic pollution is caused by human, industrial and domestic activities. The discharge of plastic from various sources is expected to negatively affect the water quality of marine systems as well as soil ecosystems. Most of the plastics that get dumped in the ocean are produced and used on land. Plastic remains in the environment for a long time and does not get degraded easily. The rate of natural removal of plastic is on the scale of decades to centuries. By the disintegration of plastics, microplastics & nano-plastics are produced and accumulated in large quantities in the environment. Management of plastic is the need of the hour and a global monitoring system is required to control this global issue. Microbial communities colonizing plastics have gained significant attention in recent years. Bacterial enzymes have the capability to degrade plastics in an eco-friendly and cost-effective way. In this study, different bacterial enzymes were molecularly docked with polystyrene to check the binding energy and ligand efficiency. The results indicated that MHETase had the strongest binding energy with polystyrene which denotes that it has the highest plastic degrading capacity.