Chapter 2

Review of Related Literature

Endophytic fungi inhabit plant tissues, in either a symbiotic or mutualistic relationship, without
harming the host plant. They are known for the production of secondary metabolites, which
shield the host from invading pathogens. Endophytic fungi produce extracellular enzymes like
laccases that have a potential role to play in dye decolorization. Dyes are complex organic
compounds that are derived from biological, chemical, and physical processes and are useful
for all industries, but mainly the textile, leather, paper, and food industries. In contrast, the
world faces ecological problems due to the toxicity of synthetic compounds. They are
nondegradable and persist for a long time. (Tochhawng, Mishra, Vineet, Passari, Singh, 2019).
Dyes are one of the major constituents of this type of environmental pollution. These are one of
the largest, important and diffuse groups of synthetic dyes used regularly in textile dying and
paper printing. Loss of reactive dyes through hydrolysis during industrial dying processes is up
to 50% and up to 15% of it is contributed by azo dyes (Shekhar et al., 2011)
Dyes can cause serious problems related to release of industrial effluents and the removal of
dyes and other chemicals pollutants (Balaji et al., 2012).
Methylene blue (MB) is cationic dyes. MB will cause increased heart rate, vomiting, shock,
Heinz body formation, cyanosis, jaundice, quadriplegia, and tissue necrosis in humans . Various
conventional methods such as physical, chemical, and biological processes have been tried for
the removal of dyes from aquatic media . Adsorption is one of the physical-chemical methods,
which is found to be the most simple and economical to remove the dyes from effluents. The
adsorption attempts have been made to find alternative low-cost adsorbents (Khodaie,
Ghasemi, Moradi, and Rahimi, 2013).
Methylene blue (MB) has been used for multiple purposes, including as an antidote for toxin-
induced and hereditary methemoglobinemia, ifosfamide-induced encephalopathy, and ackee
fruit and cyanide poisoning; as an aniline dye derivative, antimalarial agent, and antidepressant
(Lo, Darracq and Clark, 2013).
Methylene blue finds its major utilization in toxicology in the treatment of methemoglobinemia
at a dose of 1 to 2 mg/kg intravenously. By interacting with methemoglobin and the
erythrocyte's enzyme systems to reduce back to hemoglobin, methylene blue is a generally safe
drug with dose-related hemolytic effects. People with G-6-PD deficiency, along with patients
exposed to aniline dyes and dapsone, may present with special risks in the treatment of
methemoglobinemia ( Clifton and Leikin, 2003).
Biodegradation of synthetic textile dyes using different microorganisms is apromising approach.
It is now known that several microorganisms including fungi, bacteria, yeast and algae can
decolorize and even completely minerlization many azo dyes under certain environmental
conditions (AI-Jawhari, 2015).