Three types of enzyme assays were conducted to detect ligninase activity in the four fungal species. All species had high levels of lignin peroxidase (LiP) activity, with OL having the highest level (Figure 3). RV showed the highest activity for laccase, which was significantly different from OL and PC. CV had lower laccase activity compared with RV and PC showed only traces of it. Manganese peroxidase (MnP) activity detected was quite low in all four fungal species when compared with the other two enzymes. PC showed the highest activity but the difference with the other three species was insignificant.
White rot fungi can be classified into different groups based on their ability and characteristic in expressing enzyme activities. CV is one of the best-known fungus that produces all three lignolytic enzymes. Even though it is well-known that PC is an example of white rot fungus that does not produce laccase, there are evidences that low consistent amount of laccase has been detected in some strains (Srinivasan et al. 1995). Laccase activity was also detected here in OL but in low amounts. MnP activity was the lowest compared with the other enzymes and it stayed consistently low in all the four species tested. This might be due to the reason that in order for lignin to degrade, either LiP or MnP production is needed in association with
Species