Degradation of some representative polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by the water-soluble protein extracts from Zea mays L. cv PR32-B10 Roberto Barone a, 1 , Margherita-Gabriella de Biasi a, **, 1 , Vincenzo Piccialli b, * , Lorenzo de Napoli a , Giorgia Oliviero a , Nicola Borbone a , Gennaro Piccialli a, c a Department of Pharmacy, University of Naples Federico II, Via D. Montesano 49, 80131, Naples, Italy b Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Via Cyntia 4, 80126, Naples, Italy c Institute of Protein Biochemistry, CNR, Via P. Castellino 111, 80131, Naples, Italy highlights  Zea mays L. cv PR32-B10 has been hydroponically cultivated.  Protein extracts from Zea mays cv PR32-B10 have been used for PAHs degradation.  A cell-free enzymes approach has been used for PAHs degradation.  The structures of degradation products have been identified by spectral analyses.  Kinetics of the degradation processes have been investigated. article info Article history: Received 1 July 2015 Received in revised form 10 May 2016 Accepted 17 June 2016 Handling Editor: Chang-Ping Yu Keywords: Phytoremediation Zea mays Active protein extracts Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs degradation abstract The ability of the water-soluble protein extracts from Zea mais L. cv. PR32-B10 to degrade some repre- sentative polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), has been evaluated. Surface sterilized seeds of corn (Zea mais L. Pioneer cv. PR32-B10) were hydroponically cultivated in a growth chamber under no- stressful conditions. The water-soluble protein extracts isolated from maize tissues showed peroxi- dase, polyphenol oxidase and catalase activities. Incubation of the extracts with naphthalene, fluorene, phenanthrene and pyrene, led to formation of oxidized and/or degradation products. GC-MS and TLC monitoring of the processes showed that naphthalene, phenanthrene, fluorene and pyrene underwent 100%, 78%, 92% and 65% oxidative degradation, respectively, after 120 min. The chemical structure of the degradation products were determined by 1 H NMR and ESI-MS spectrometry. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous con- taminants and their diffusion in the environment is a matter of serious concern world-wide. PAHs are dispersed in air, adhering to particulate, in water and soils. The primary sources of PAHs in the environment are the human activities such as, for example, the combustion of biofuels. They can enter the food chain and diet is the primary source of human exposure, with edible oils and fats significantly contributing to human exposure to PAHs. Most of them are classified as probably or potentially carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency of Research on Cancer (IARC) (IARC, 2010; IARC, 2012; Menzie et al.,1992; Kim et al., 2013). In addition, evidence has been provided that metabolic activation of PAHs can induce lung and skin tumours in animals. As a consequence, much effort has been made to develop pro- cedures capable of removing these substances from soils. Biodeg- radation of PAHs by many types of bacteria and fungi has been the subject of a number of investigations (Bamforth and Singleton, 2005; Bezalel et al., 1997; Haritash and Kaushik, 2009; Seo et al., * Corresponding author. ** Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: margherita.debiasi@unina.it (M.-G. de Biasi), vinpicci@unina.it (V. Piccialli). 1 These authors contributed equally to this work. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Chemosphere journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/chemosphere http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2016.06.069 0045-6535/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Chemosphere 160 (2016) 258e265