Title

Analysis of EAWAG-BBD pathway prediction system for the identification of malathion degrading microbes

Authors

Subramaniam Sivakumar^1*, P. Anitha1, Balsubramanian Ramesh² and Gopal Suresh³

Affiliation

¹Department of Biochemistry, Sri Sankara Arts and Science College, Enathur – 631 561;

²Department of Biotechnology, Sri Sankara Arts and Science College, Enathur – 631 561;

³Department of Microbiology, Sri Sankara Arts and Science College, Enathur – 631 561;

Email

sivabio@gmail.com

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received February 6, 2017; Revised March 6, 2017; Accepted March 7, 2017; Published March 31, 2017

Insectides are the toxic substances that are used to kill insects. The use of insecticides is believed to be one of the major factors behind the increase in agricultural productivity in the 20th century. The organophosphates are now the largest and most versatile class of insectiside used and Malathion is the predominant type utilized. The accumulation of Malthion in enviornment is the biggest threat to the environment because of its toxicity. Malathion is lethal to beneficial insects, snails, micro crustaceans, fish, birds, amphibians, and soil microorganisms. Chronic exposure of non-diabetic farmers to organophosphorus Malathion pesticides may induce insulin resistance, which might ultimately results in diabetes melitus. Given the potential carcinogenic risk from the pesticides there is serious need to develop remediation processes to eliminate or minimize contamination in the environment. Biodegradation could be a reliable and cost effective technique for pesticide abatement. Since today as there were no metabolic pathway predicted for the degradation of organophosphates pesticide Malathion in KEGG database or in any of the other pathway databases. Thus in the present study, an attempt has been made to predict the microbial biodegradation pathway of Malathion using bioinformatics tools. The present study predicted the degradation pathway for Malathion. The present study also identifies, Streptomyces sp. and E.Coli are capable of degrading Malathion through pathway prediction system.

Keywords

Insecticide, Malthion, Biodegradation, pathwy prediction, environmental toxicity.

Citation

Sivakumar et al. Bioinformation 13(3): 73-77 (2017)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.