Biodegradation of Natural Rubber by Fungi and Bacteria

Environmental pollution is currently one of the major problems that are threatening biodiversity, ecosystems, and human health around the world. Natural rubber, which is one of the most significant polymers due to its variety of uses, has now become a serious environmental concern. Rubber waste management poses one of the greatest problems because it is extremely resilient and persists in the environment despite several mitigation efforts. Biodegradation is an eco-friendly alternative to conventional disposal methods and has gained tremendous interest in recent years. Several studies on rubber biodegradation utilizing fungi and bacteria have been reported. However, except for a few studies on technical applications, the majority of research on these microbes has focused on the fundamentals of rubber biodegradation. The challenge with biodegradation as a potential solution for rubber waste management is that we have limited mechanistic insight into rubber biodegradation, and the complicated composition of rubber products inhibits cell growth and activity of microbes. Thus it becomes important to fully comprehend the mechanism of rubber biodegradation and continue the search for new microbial strains so that the acquired knowledge can be utilized to develop a biodegradation process suitable for scale-up. In this short review, rubber degradation using fungi and bacteria is highlighted.