Evaluation of the Potential of Sewage Sludge Mycobiome to Degrade High Diclofenac and Bisphenol-A Concentrations Conejo Saucedo, Ulises Ledezma Villanueva, Alejandro Ángeles de Paz, Gabriela Herrero Cervera, Mario Calvo Sáinz, Concepción Aranda Ballesteros, Elisabet Sewage sludge Pharmaceutical active compounds Bioremediation Endocrine disruptors Shotgun-sequencing technologies Fungi Bacteria One of the most challenging environmental threats of the last two decades is the effects of emerging pollutants (EPs) such as pharmaceutical compounds or industrial additives. Diclofenac and bisphenol A have regularly been found in wastewater treatment plants, and in soils and water bodies because of their extensive usage and their recalcitrant nature. Due to the fact of this adversity, fungal communities play an important role in being able to safely degrade EPs. In this work, we obtained a sewage sludge sample to study both the culturable and non-culturable microorganisms through DNA extraction and massive sequencing using Illumina MiSeq techniques, with the goal of finding degraders adapted to polluted environments. Afterward, degradation experiments on diclofenac and bisphenol A were performed with the best fungal degraders. The analysis of bacterial diversity showed that Dethiosulfovibrionaceae, Comamonadaceae, and Isosphaeraceae were the most abundant families. A predominance of Ascomycota fungi in the culturable and non-culturable population was also detected. Species such as Talaromyces gossypii, Syncephalastrum monosporum, Aspergillus tabacinus, and Talaromyces verruculosus had remarkable degradation rates, up to 80% of diclofenac and bisphenol A was fully degraded. These results highlight the importance of characterizing autochthonous microorganisms and the possibility of selecting native fungal microorganisms to develop tailored biotransformation technologies for EPs. 2021-05-28T14:56:46Z 2021-05-28T14:56:46Z 2021 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Conejo-Saucedo, U.; Ledezma-Villanueva, A.; Ángeles de Paz, G.; Herrero-Cervera, M.; Calvo, C.; Aranda, E. Evaluation of the Potential of Sewage Sludge Mycobiome to Degrade High Diclofenac and Bisphenol-A Concentrations. Toxics 2021, 9, 115. https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics 9060115 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/68867 10.3390/toxics9060115 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI