Promising approaches towards biotransformation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with Ascomycota fungi

The bioremediation of hazardous aromatic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) has been extensively studied in recent decades, including the potential use of different phyla of fungi for this purpose. Molecular technologies are starting to reveal that the real players in polluted environments are mainly represented by the phylum Ascomycota and the subphylum Mucoromycotina and, to a lesser extent, the phylum Basidiomycota. Paradoxically, despite their key involvement, these groups of fungi are often treated as a black box, and their potential roles in the transformation of xenobiotics and catabolic pathways remain poorly understood. The complex intracellular metabolism seems to play a major role in the ability of these fungi to transform or remove PAHs, and their associated enzymes are encoded in the xenome. Functional genomics offers novel information about this enzymatic system, which is widely distributed among all phyla.