Isolation of autochthonous non-white rot fungi with potential for enzymatic upgrading of Venezuelan extra-heavy crude oil

The potential of indigenous Paenibacillus ehimensis BS1 for recovering heavy crude oil by biotransformation to light fractions

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) is a potential technology for residual heavy oil recovery. Many heavy oil fields in Oman and elsewhere have difficulty in crude oil recovery because it is expensive due to its high viscosity. Indigenous microbes are capable of improving the fluidity of heavy oil, by changing its high viscosity and producing lighter oil fractions. Many spore-forming bacteri...

Natural Surfactants from Venezuelan Extra Heavy Crude Oil - Study of Interfacial and Structural Properties

Silver nanoparticles, a potential alternative to conventional anti-fungal agents to fungal pathogens affecting crop plants

Metallic silver nanoparticles have been reduced from silver nitrate by employing the extracellular enzymatic machinery of edible White button Mushroom (Agaricus bisporus). The physical properties of these particles, size and shapes have been determined using techniques like TEM, FTIR and XRD and were reported in our earlier report. But, what stands of paramount importance in the presen...

Effect of Oyster Mushroom on Biodegradation of Oil Palm Mesocarp Fibre

The problem of degradation of agricultural residues from palm oil industry is increasing due to its expansion. Lignocelloulosic waste from these industry represent large amount of unutilized resources, this is due to their high lignin content. Since white rot fungi are capable of degrading lignin, its potential for the degradation of lignocelloulosic waste from palm oil industry was accessed. T...

Solid-state fermentation in multi-well plates to assess pretreatment efficiency of rot fungi on lignocellulose biomass

The potential of fungal pretreatment to improve fermentable sugar yields from wheat straw or Miscanthus was investigated. We assessed 63 fungal strains including 53 white-rot and 10 brown-rot fungi belonging to the Basidiomycota phylum in an original 12 day small-scale solid-state fermentation (SSF) experiment using 24-well plates. This method offers the convenience of one-pot processing of sam...