Treatment of dye effluent often involves both
physical and chemical methods that are expensive
and not always effective. Therefore, extensive effort is
being directed to development of inexpensive and
environmentally friendly bioremediation methods.
Synthetic dyes have been shown to be decolorized
by white-rot fungi. The non-specific extracellular
lignin-modifying enzymes (LMEs) of these fungi are
responsible for degrading the dyes (Pointing 2001).
The white-rot fungi and their bulk LMEs can be
produced by inexpensive fermentation processes. This
makes dye bioremediation cost effective. Under
favorable conditions in submerged fermentation, the
white-rot fungi can self-immobilize into spherical
pellets and this facilitates biomass removal from
LME-containing broth. Both the pellets and the