In wood, lignin is attacked by wood degrading organisms using oxidative enzymes with low specificity to get access to the polysaccharides. Residual lignin ends up in the organic part of soil, where microbes further degrade it. Some microbes use similar enzymes as wood degrading organisms, but there might also be more specific enzymes, such as hydrolases cleaving �-O-4 ethers, that may have very important technical applications.We isolated several strains of microbes from soil under anaerobic conditions that appear to be able to live on lignin as the sole carbon source. Some strains were cultivated in shaking flask cultures with lignin as sole carbon source. The GPC data showed lignin consumption during cultivation while fungal biomass was accumulating, which suggests there exist anaerobic strains that can grow on lignin which might also have lignin degrading ability by a different mechanism than oxidation. These might be important as source of specific lignin degrading enzymes.

Isolation and identification of soil microorganisms under anaerobic condition which is able to live on lignin as carbon source

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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