Abstract
A screening has been performed to find hyper-ligninolytic fungi, which degtrade beech and pine lignin extensively in order to broaden the understanding of the ligninolytic enzymes elaborated by various white-rot fungi. One hundred and twenty two ligninolytic strains were selected from decayed woods with a selective medium for screening ligninolytic wood-rotting fungi. Two of them, Phanerochaete sordida YK-624 and YK-472, showed much higher ligninolytic activity and selectivity in beech-wood degradation than typical lignin-degrading fungi, phanerochaete chrysosporium and Coriolus versicolor. They also degraded birch dioxane lignin and residual lignin in unbleached kraft pulp(UKP) much more extensively than P. chrysosporium and C. versicolor. During fungal treatment of beech wood-powder, the fungus strain P. sordida YK-624 showed higher activity of extracellular manganese peroxidase (MnP) in the medium than P. chrysosporium. It also showed MnP activity, which would not be lignin peroxidast during treatment of oxygen-bleached kraft pulp(OKP) and under enzyme-inducing conditin.