Introduction

Increasing environmental pollution generated the need for development of environmental friendly, cost effective and efficient clean technologies for its removal. As reported by the European Environment Agency, by 2025 total contaminated sites will rise to 50% and about 340,000 sites will possibly need urgent remediation (European Environment Agency 2015). Pollution is rising at alarming rate due to the industrial and agricultural revolutions which resulted in accumulation of different hazardous compounds such as heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, xenobiotics, and several organic pollutants into the environment. The lack of adequate waste management leads to the accumulation of these threatening compounds into the living system and posing a serious concern to human health (Barh et al. 2019). Heavy metals pose a severe threat to organisms because of their toxic, biomagnification and non-biodegradable nature. Almost all the heavy metals have harmful effects but some signify serious health consequences in living beings even at very low concentration, like Ag, As, Be, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Sb, Se, Tl, and Zn (Brzostowski et al. 2011; Gadd 2010). However, a few heavy metals play an important role in the physiological functioning of the living organisms. The chemical coordination and redox properties of heavy metals are responsible to sustain the control mechanisms such as homeostasis, transfer, and attachment to the target cells (Singh et al. 2011; Xavier et al. 2019). The key heavy metals like Fe, Cu, Zn, and Ni are required by the organisms in trace amounts for various functions. If the concentration exceeds the optimum level then it can result into various complications (Varol and Sunbul 2018). Many carcinogenic heavy metals are found in untreated industrial effluents at high concentrations and the presence of these toxic metals promote reduction in dissolved oxygen level and causing “oxygen sag” in the water (Singh 2017). Industrial effluents contain a mixture of a complex organic compounds including pharmaceutical drugs, antimicrobial agents, antifungal chemicals, fertilizers, and pesticides that are polluting the water system gradually (Noman et al. 2019). Pharmaceutical drugs or other xenobiotics are used for the treatment of various diseases but after administration, they undergo series of pathways such as absorption, metabolism, distribution, excretion and these unmetabolized drug forms tend to accumulate in the environment (Kryczyk et al. 2017; Kulshreshtha et al. 2014). It is also well documented that xenobiotics show teratogenic, carcinogenic, and endocrine-disrupting properties (Atuma et al. 1996; Crinnion 2011; Helmfrid et al. 2012; Kramer et al. 2012; Majidi et al. 2013; Muscat et al. 2003). Recently, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are recognized as the most harmful xenobiotics across the world. They have potential to bioaccumulate inside the lipid tissues, adipose tissue of animals and humans and organic components of the soil (Danielovic et al. 2014). Soil contents are altering rapidly through excessive use of pesticides (Alvarez et al. 2017; Fallaset al. 2017; Passananti et al. 2014; Sotoet al. 2017). Other serious factors to soil and water pollution are hydrocarbons including crude oils, diesel, petroleum hydrocarbons (PHC), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These are being utilized in many industries as energy sources which have a significant role in enhancing pollution, detoriating human health as a carcinogen, photosensitizers, and mutagen (Bhagat et al. 2016; Gold et al. 2000; Lamichhane et al. 2017). Moreover, the entrance of dyes into the water system cause disturbance in the aquatic organism by interrupting the light penetration into the deeper part that results in a decrease in photosynthetic activity, and necessary gas availability in the water ecosystem (Chaudhary et al. 2018).

To counteract these environmental issues scientists are putting forth effort to enhance clean technologies. Various conventional chemical methods such as chemical precipitation, ion exchange, electrochemical application, reverse osmosis, oxidation, and reduction are non-specific, high-cost processes and could remove pollutants effectively only at dilute concentrations. Despite being cost-effective they need additional chemicals or agents (such as lime, bisulphide, and resin), and their efficacy is affected by low pH (Singh 2007). Owing to limitations in the chemical method, bioremediation is nascent and clean technology to diminish hazardous pollutants from the ecosystem (Barh et al. 2019). It includes microbial bioremediation, bioventing, bioleaching, bioaugmentation, biostimulation, mycoremediation, and phytoremediation (Ali et al. 2017). Among these biological remediation methods, mycoremediation is advantageous because it can effectively degrade a wide range of pollutants and its efficiency is not limited to specific pollutant concentrations (Adenipekun and Lawal 2011; Asamudo et al. 2005).

Mycoremediation is an eco-friendly and economically feasible process that uses fungal biomass to clean contaminated soil and water from toxic pollutants. Mushrooms are fungal fruiting bodies that emerge from a mass of fibrous tissue known as mycelium. These mycelia assist as biological filters and potent sorbents since their aerial structures comprise huge biomass and tough texture (Volesky and Holan 1995). The fungal biomass have distinctive characteristics to release extracellular enzymes and acids for the decomposition of lignin, cellulose and simultaneously, assisting in solubilization and metal complexing (Damodaran et al. 2014; Mani and Kumar 2014; Sesli et al. 2008; Singh and Sharma 2013). They are ideal candidates for the remediation of various pollutants because their cell wall is made up of polysaccharides and proteins which have vital functional groups that help in the binding of organic and inorganic pollutants (Igir et al. 2018). They are also known as excellent degraders due to features such as vigorous growth, extensive hyphal network, resilience to changing environmental conditions, occurrence of metal-binding proteins, and extracellular enzyme systems (Khan et al. 2019). Fungi involve different strategies such as biodegradation, biosorption, and bioconversion to clean the environmental matrices from several persisting pollutants as shown in Fig. 1. Mushrooms or macro-fungi are a good source of proteins and have been consumed by people for decades. But these days, they are drawing attention in the field of remediation due to their enzymatic machinery and capability of degrading various pollutants just to maintain growth and development (Elekes and Busuioc 2010). In this review the use of mushroom as biological tools for clean up of the environment and role of fungi in degrading various pollutants like pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, heavy metals, dyes and pharmaceuticals is discussed.

Fig.1
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Fungal interaction with recalcitrant pollutants exhibiting different approaches for remediation of contaminated sites

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Biodegradation

Biodegradation permits the degradation of deleterious organic substances into non-toxic forms using microbes from the polluted sites. It completely mineralizes the complex organic form into simpler inorganic forms such as H2O, CO2, NO3, and others. Mushroom or macro-fungi have shown unique ability to degrade several hazardous and lignin-containing wastes generated from various natural or anthropogenic activities (Asgher et al. 2018). Macro-fungi act as effective candidates due to widespread distribution, large biomass production, and rapid growth of hyphae (Ma and Zhai 2014). Further, they have a distinct mechanism to catabolise lignin via extracellular enzymes such as peroxidises (including lignin peroxidase (LiP) (EC1.11.1.14), manganese peroxidase (MnP) (EC 1.11.1.13), versatile peroxidase (VP) (1.11.1.16)) and copper-containing oxidases i.e. laccase (Cardoso et al. 2018).These extracellular enzymes secreted from different mushrooms can degrade toxic pollutants by the breaking of ester, amide, ether bonds, and also the aliphatic chains or aromatic rings of compounds like dyes, chlorinated phenols, dioxins, pesticides, explosives, PAHs, and other xenobiotics (Chaudhary et al. 2018; Hadar and Cullen 2013).

The extracellular enzymes are non-specific and possess free radicals that degrade structurally different xenobiotics. The mechanisms of some extracellular enzymes are discussed here like lignin peroxidases degrade xenobiotics by oxidising aromatic compounds and other compounds using O2 and release water only as a by-product whereas manganese peroxidases degrade only phenolic compounds (Mester and Tien 2000). Peroxidases belong to class oxidoreductases, utilize H2O2 to catalyze oxidation reactions. Among the ligninolytic enzymes, MnPs are popular in lignin degradation due to their molecular structure and were first discovered in white-rot fungi (WRF) (Gold et al. 2000; Kuwahara et al. 1984). MnPs have Mn2+ catalytic binding sites linked through three acidic residues and these sites oxidize Mn2+ to Mn3+ and then Mn3+ chelates complexes. MnPs and LiPs are potent enzymes in the bio-delignification process. Another prevailing group of peroxidases is VPs that are grouped into class II peroxidases because they show properties of both MnP and LiP. VPs can oxidize Mn2+and its oxidizing mechanism is similar to MnPs (Ruiz-Duenas et al. 2007). The stability of MnPs and VPs ranges between pH 2–9 and temperature 25 °C–70 °C.These ligninolytic peroxidases perform an essential role in the biodegradation process whereas the productivity of these enzymes depends on many factors including the composition of growth media, pH, temperature, and growth phase of fungus, and other essential factors that affect the expression of enzyme-producing genes (Knop et al. 2015).

The activity of these enzymes can be enhanced by using various mediators and other enzymes such as quinone reductases, lipases (Kumar and Chandra 2020). Tables 1 and 2 indicate degradation of complex recalcitrant pollutants into simple products by using different mushrooms. The degradation of high molecular weight PAHs such as Benzo[a]pyrene (Bap) was achieved by laccase and manganese peroxidase of Pleurotus ostreatus in the presence of heavy metals such as Cu, Zn, Mn, and ligninolytic enzyme mediators such as 3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonate and vanillin (Vanacken et al. 1999). Degradation of Bap was found 71.2% and 74.2% in the presence of Cu at the concentration of 5 mM and 15 mM respectively, whereas 78.7% degradation was achieved at 1 mM concentration of 2,20-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonate) and 83.6% degradation was obtained at 5 mM concentration of vanillin natural mediator (Bhattacharya et al. 2013). The mycoremediation of petroleum-contaminated soils was done by using sunflower, fermented palm wine, and P. ostreatus. After 90 days, P. ostreatus displayed the highest efficiency with 85% whereas sunflower with 69% and fermented palm wine showed 70%. It was also observed that P. ostreatus efficacy relies on the type of substrate and application method (Dickson et al. 2020). A novel fungal species Ascochyta was applied on contaminated soil to remove carbamates at several concentrations but act effectively only at low concentrations (Kaur and Balomajumder 2019). PAH and pharmaceutical compounds removed 100% from bio-refinery wastewater at 500 ppm concentration under the saline condition by two halophilic fungi Aspergillus sydowii and Aspergillus destruens (González-Abradelo et al. 2019). Another fungus Trichoderma harzianum gave a positive result by degrading diesel by up to 41.9% (Elshafie et al. 2020). Anti-depression drugs such as Venlafaxine (VFX) and O-desmethylvenlafaxine (ODMVFX) form carcinogenic N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) precursor or by-products after water chlorination if they fail to degrade completely, but Trametes versicolor has been found effective in absolute degradation of these drugs (Llorca et al. 2019).

Table 1 Mushrooms involved in degradation of effluents at various concentrations
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Table 2 An overview of degradation of soil waste at several concentrations by mushroom
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These enzymes are also efficient to deteriorate unmanageable non-polymeric pollutants such as nitrotoluenes, organic and synthetic dyes, pentachlorophenol (PCP), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) under in vitro conditions (Lin et al. 1990). Intractable pollutants such as synthetic colorant diazo dye, Congo red is a recalcitrant xenobiotic compound degraded by enzyme laccase under optimum condition. Decolourisation of Congo red was found elevated when broth was supplemented with fertilizer. Upon optimizing the physicochemical parameters of enzyme laccase the dye decolorization achieved up to 29.25–97.28% at stable condition whereas 82.1–100% at shaking condition (Bhattacharya et al. 2011). Table 3 signify the degradation of dyes from the effluent using mushrooms. The ligninolytic enzymes play an essential role in managing various pollutants through degradation, detoxification of recalcitrant compounds, and decolorization of dyes from the effluents (Zainith et al. 2020). Laccases (Lac) are one of the most prevailing lignolytic enzymes in degradation processes. These are glycoprotein in nature and contains three Cu centers to oxidize phenols, dyes, and several xenobiotics and produce reactive radicals as a byproduct which further undergo depolymerization, demethylation, dehalogenation, or quinone formation (Claus et al. 2002). Laccase was found to degrade benzene and naphthalene derivatives to non-toxic orange-red dyes (Polak et al. 2016). It can also remove bisphenol A (BPA) up to 97.68% at pH 5.20 demonstrated by RSM results (Hongyan et al. 2019a, b). Many research revealed the potential of fungal laccase in decolorization and detoxification of industrial dyes in vitro (Pandeya et al. 2018). Enzyme laccase and versatile peroxidase secreted from Leptosphaerulina sp. indicated a novel approach to eliminate three Isoxazolyl-Penicillin antibiotics (IP) such as oxacillin (OXA), cloxacillin (CLX), and dicloxacillin (DCX) from the polluted water. These enzymes provided 100% removal of IP antibiotics and biotransformed them into a non-toxic product (Copete-Pertuz et al. 2018). An ideal laccase purified from Pleurotus sp. MAK-II at pH 4.5 and 60 °C under the optimum physicochemical factors could degrade the textile dyes such as the diazo dye and the anthraquinone dye 96% and 72%, respectively. The functionality of these purified laccases can be increased through Cu(2+), Mg(2+), and Ca(2+) and displayed strong stability towards various solvents and surfactants (Manavalan et al. 2015). Laccase (Lac) synthesis and activity rely on optimum conditions and nutrients because these factors act on transcription level and give different results within the same fungal species of different enzyme isoforms (Piscitelli et al. 2011). Another saprophytic fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium was found to remove 36.4% of total lignin from corn stover at 35 °C temperature in 10 days (Yao and Nokes 2014). The enzymatic degradation of pharmaceutical wastes has been well-reported but the degradation of anticancer drugs is yet to be explored (Pereira et al. 2019). Although white-rot fungi enzymes can remove it (with high reaction time) from the water and give a promising result if proper nutrients are provided for maintenance of fungal growth. The drugs are becoming an emerging obstacle to the environment since conventional treatments are unable to treat these drugs properly. Moreover, the enzymes have the potential to degrade complex polymers such as plastics (Luz et al. 2013).Macro and micro-plastics are a threat to the environment but fungi utilize these plastics as their nutrient source. Many works have been performed to degrade plastics using fungi but their biodegradation pathway and involved enzymes are still unexplored. Molecular tools and omic technologies aid to identify the fungi with better degradation properties and also boost the enzyme activity (Sanchez 2019). With the help of genomic and transcriptomic technologies, Dentipellis spp., a white-rot fungi, was enhanced the degradation potential of PAHs upto 90% at the concentration of 100 mg/l within 10 days and these omic approaches also suggested that white-rot fungi use non-ligninolytic enzymes instead of ligninolytic enzymes in PAH degradation (Park et al. 2019). Transcriptomic data predicated not only the whole repository of specific inducible genes but also revealed functions of some uncharacterized genes having the potential to metabolize PAHs effectively. Moreover, metagenomic analysis enhances mycoremediation process at the community level by exploring potent species in the ecosystem. The complete knowledge of fungal degradation will improve the implementation of mycoremediation at a large-scale (Park and Choi 2020). These omic approaches provide throughput in hydrocarbon degradation and highlight the active genes, proteins, and also explore the significance of less abundant species (Laczi et al. 2020).

Table 3 Decolorization of dyes using different mushrooms
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Biosorption

Biosorption is an effective and passive process in remediating metal/pollutants from the contaminated environment using macro-fungi. This process is proficient to remediate industrial effluents and can also recover metals from it. Biosorption mechanism classification has been done on the basis of localization of sorted pollutants from the effluent: (1) extracellular accumulation/precipitation, (2) cell surface sorption/precipitation, and (3) intracellular accumulation. Another classification of absorption mechanism is based on cell metabolism: (1) metabolism independent biosorption and (2) metabolism dependent biosorption. The metabolism independent sorption process is relatively fast, reversible, and requires no metabolic energy for metal/pollutants binding to the biomass. The physicochemical interaction involves the metal and the functional group for metal uptake inside the microbial cell (Pagnanelli et al. 2002). Biosorption includes some other processes such as ion exchange, physical absorption, and chemical sorption (Fawzy et al. 2017). These processes can be achieved both through dead and live biomass (Banerjee et al. 2018). However, in biosorption, dead biomass of mushrooms is more advantageous over viable cells (Gavrilescu 2004). Recently, fungal pellets are receiving more attention due to their better biosorption performance in comparison to fungal mycelia. They can effectively remove heavy metals, pesticides, dyes and pharmaceuticals. Still biosorption of complex pollutants mixture using fungal pellet is unexplored, and there is a need for practical application of biosorption through fungal pellet in treating wastewater (Jazmin et al. 2020). The biosorbents can be prepared from spent mushroom compost and different parts of mushrooms like mycelia and fruiting body. A novel biosorbent of white-rot fungi, P. chrysosprium was functionalized with an intracellular CaCO3 mineral scaffold to achieve effective adsorption of heavy metals from the contaminated solution. Intracellular mineral scaffold functions as the internal metal container in functionalized fungi to enhance the biosorption of Pb(II) and Cd(II). Kinetic studies evaluated that chemisorption might be the rate-limiting step of biosorption. The intra-particle diffusion model suggested that the biosorption process might be classified into three steps: rapid adsorption at the surface, the slow shift from external to internal, and reaching equilibrium moderately (Lu et al. 2020). Many factors affect the biosorption rate such as pH, temperature, substrate concentration, nature, contact time, and host cell wall composition (Dutta and Hyder 2019; Gupta et al. 2018; Shamim 2018). A fungal species T. harzianum showed promising result in the uptake of heavy metals from the water and soil. These species displayed high tolerance to nickel (Ni) but they have low metal removal capacity (Cecchi et al. 2017a, b). However, these species were also tested for silver (Ag) biosorption that gave better potential to remove the metal up to 46.3% and showed high metal tolerance (Cecchi et al. 2017a, b). Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus fumigatus was found efficient to remove zinc (Zn) by 40.9% and 59.7%, respectively (Faryal et al. 2006). Analysis of various heavy metals showed a toxic effect on human molecular mechanisms but several microbes indicated high metal tolerance and performed different mechanisms to eliminate hazardous metals from the polluted sites (Jackson et al. 1996). The filamentous fungi possess better tendency to remove heavy metals such as Cd, Cu, and Ni by up to 1500 mg/L and have huge significance in the process of bioremediation of polluted water and soil (Subash et al. 2017). Agaricus bisporus and L. edodes mushrooms have highly adsorptive substances including chitin and chitosan which aid to remove residues of pharmaceuticals such as paracetamol and 17α-ethynyl estradiol (EE2). L. edodes was found to have a high degree of deacetylation of chitosan, and a high percentage of porosity. Moreover, the adsorption kinetics and isotherm evaluation suggested that Shittake bisorbents showed better efficiency in adsorption of paracetamol and 17α-ethynyl estradiol (Menk et al. 2019). Fungal chitosan was used in the synthesis of chitosan nanoparticles by applying sodium tripolyphosphate that serves as an effective biosorbent to remove heavy metals from the contaminated water and soil. After experimental analysis chitosan nanoparticle was found to adsorb Pb more effectively than Cu and have better efficiency than bulk fungal chitosan (Alsharari et al. 2018). Another bioactive polymer (1 → 3)-α-d-glucans was isolated from different fungi to evaluate its performance in the biosorption of various heavy metals. The α-glucans isolated from Shittake mushroom were utilize to treat an aqueous solution containing a mixture of Ni2+, Cd2+, Zn2+, Pb2+. The polymer α-glucans achieved attention due to having unique features such as low crystallinity, highly-developed surface, and also many –OH groups that aid to enhanced sorption property (Nowak et al. 2019). Recently, metabolic-dependent biosorption is preferably considered as bioaccumulation instead of the type of biosorption (Bilal et al. 2018). Table 4 designates the maximum concentration and high percentage of metal removal by different mushrooms.

Table 4 Uptake of heavy metals from the effluent by mushrooms
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Bioaccumulation

This type of sorption process takes place in viable cells. Depending on the cell’s metabolism, intracellular accumulation occurs when metals are transported across the cell membrane. The bioaccumulation of metals occurs inside an organism through three pathways that are passive diffusion, facilitated diffusion, and active transport (Banerjee et al. 2018). The filamentous fungal stains A. fumigatus and Beauveria bassiana showed a great tendency to remove metals from the mixture of multi-metals such as Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn simultaneously. Both the stains indicated a high tolerance index to all metals except Cr and Ni up to 500 mg/L (Gola et al. 2016). These fungal strains also exhibited preferable adaptability to multi-metal stress owing to higher cube root growth constant and better multi-metal accumulation potential at different concentrations. At 30 mg/L concentration of multi-metal B. bassiana accumulated 26.94 ± 0.07 mg/L and A. fumigatus was found to accumulate 27.59 ± 0.09 mg/L. Both the stains have the efficiency to reduce the concentration of individual metals excluding chromium below its permissible limit (Deya et al. 2016). Trichoderma brevicompactum isolated from an earthworm gut was also found to have high potential to remove heavy metals as both individual and multi-metals. The removal potential of this fungus for multi-metals was achieved at 45.9% whereas 64.5% for Cu(II) but highest value was observed for Pb(II) up to 97.5% (Zhang et al. 2020). The accumulation potential of fungi B. bassiana and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa for Zn and Pb was not much affected after lowering the temperature. Both the species showed highest accumulation value up to 8.44% and 16.55% for Pb, respectively (Purchase et al. 2008). B. bassiana acted as potent remediation fungi to remove industrial dyes and heavy metal Pb(II) from the synthetic wastewater by up to 84–97% and 58–75%, respectively (Gola et al. 2017). Mushroom produces stress compounds of proteinous and non-proteinous origin in response to metal stress in the environment and mushroom cap facilitates metal ion uptake by releasing stress-related factors such as metallothionein, glutathione, and plastocyanin. They have evolved better adaptability and high metal accumulation mechanism with short life cycle which makes them more advantageous over other organisms including plants (Damodaran et al. 2013). High metal/metalloid tolerance in mushrooms helps them to thrive and accumulate metals from the befouled environment (Chengjian et al. 2016).

Bioconversion

Bioconversion is a process of recycling lignocellulosic wastes into value-added products. Industrial or agricultural wastes that are useless have immense potential for bioconversion into food with high organoleptic properties and rich in nutrition. Mushroom species play an important role in bioconversion of wastes because they posses appropriate enzymatic mechanisms for the conversion of complex organic forms into simpler forms and successfully be cultivated on these wastes. These mushrooms have dual significance in providing nutrient-rich food as well as solving waste management problems simultaneously (Naraian et al. 2016). The agricultural wastes are a good source of many nutrients and bioactive compounds. These days, many studies are being organized to convert these agro-wastes into other useful products. The cultivation of mushroom fruiting bodies as a product using these agro-wastes is an example of bioconversion (Albores et al. 2006). Various agro and industrial solid wastes are converted into valuable products with enhanced biological efficiency through different mushrooms shown in Table 5 and also these wastes are utilized as substrates in mushroom cultivation. When paper and cardboard industrial waste was used as the substrate for the cultivation of Pleurotus citrinopileatus it decreased mushroom nutrient profile and increased number of frameshift mutagens that made it unfit for consumption. However, mixing the substrate with wheat straw resulted in high biological efficiency and nutrient contents with decrease in frameshift mutagens (Kulshreshtha et al. 2013). Moreover, bioconversion of wheat straw supplemented with surfactant enhanced the phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity in white-rot fungi. Further, this novel approach came up with the method of lignocellulosic biomass conversion into medicinal mushrooms at less expense (Zhao et al. 2020). Two fungi Trichoderma reesei and Aspergillus phoenicis were co-cultured to form multispecies biofilm to enhance the productivity of cellulosic enzyme β-glucosidase upto 2.5 folds which plays an important role in the conversion of plant biomass to monomeric sugar residues (Xiros and Studer 2017).

Table 5 Overview on bioconversion efficiency of different mushrooms
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Conclusion and future prospects

Remediation through mushrooms elucidates a worthwhile and effective approach to remove toxic pollutants such as pesticides, heavy metals, xenobiotics, and hydrocarbons that are persisting in the ecosystem and deteriorating soil and water. Depending on the type of contaminants, fungal bioremediation employs different methods to combat such recalcitrant and intractable pollutants. Mushroom mycelium and fruiting bodies have a high potential to degrade contaminants through various extracellular ligninolytic and non-ligninolytic enzymes. The ligninolytic enzyme systems have a wide-range of industrial applications. But the low yield of enzymes in natural hosts constitutes a bottleneck in large scale and sustainable application. Thus, there is a need to elevate the production of these enzymes at a large scale using different mediators and efforts should be made for new ligninolytic enzymes characterization to enhance the bioremediation process. For a better understanding of the mechanism of mycoremediation advanced proteomic studies should be explored. This approach will help to identify the specific genes, proteins, and metabolites that are involved in the removal of pollutants and also provide useful information in modeling fungi genetically to enhance the efficiency and improve the remediation strategies.