Summary
Extensive industrialization has introduced many xenobiotic chemicals into the soil and water bodies in the environment. One of such xenobiotic chemicals is organophosphorus (OP), a pesticide causing a serious threat to the aquatic as well as terrestrial flora and fauna. Owing to the persistent nature of OP compounds, there is a dire need to recognize novel microbial enzymes and redesign them for the efficient degradation of these contaminants. The catalytic efficiency of microbial enzymes has been widely utilized for industrial applications due to the ease of production, stability, modification, and optimization. For this purpose, there are several advanced techniques, such as protein engineering, metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics approaches, and bioinformatics tools for in silico analysis and protein designing, which have been employed in recent decades. This chapter provides insights and recent developments about the unearthing and remodeling of microbial enzymes for the degradation of OP pesticides.
