ORIGINAL ARTICLE Biodegradation of poly (e-caprolactone) (PCL) film and foam plastic by Pseudozyma japonica sp. nov., a novel cutinolytic ustilaginomycetous yeast species Fatma F. Abdel-Motaal • Magdi A. El-Sayed • Soad A. El-Zayat • Shin-ichi Ito Received: 24 June 2013 / Accepted: 27 October 2013 / Published online: 13 November 2013 Ó The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Aliphatic polyesters poly (e-caprolactone) (PCL) and foam plastic have been shown to be biode- gradable by microorganisms, which possess cutinolytic enzymes. Pseudozyma japonica-Y7-09, showed both high growth and enzyme activity on Yeast malt (YM) medium fed with PCL film than on YM medium. The hydrolytic enzyme activity of the culture on p-nitrophenyl butyrate indicated the occurrence of cutinase enzyme. This activity was confirmed by the degradation of PCL film which reached to the maximum (93.33 %) at 15 days and the degradation of foam plastic which reached 43.2 % at 30 days. These results suggest that the extracellular cu- tinase enzyme of Pseudozyma japonica-Y7-09 may be useful for the biological degradation of plastic wastes. Keywords Plastic degradation Á PCL degradation Á Foam degradation Á Yeast Á Pseudozyma Introduction Plastics become the essential ingredients to provide a quality due to their versatility. These are now rival metals in breadth of use and in severity of applications because of their flexibility, toughness, excellent barrier and physical properties and ease of fabrication (Seymour 1971; Andrady et al. 1998; Meenakshi et al. 2002; Fang and Fowler 2003; Orhan et al. 2004). The growing amount of plastic waste is generating more and more environmental problems worldwide. To overcome this problem, the biodegradation of plastics has been subjected to extensive studies during the past three decades. Biodegradation of plastics is seen by many as a promising solution to this problem as it is environmentally-friendly. Some types of plastics have been shown to be biodegradable by microorganisms which produce enzymes. Those biodegradable plastics such as aliphatic polyesters (polycaprolactone, PCL) which are used mainly in thermoplastic polyurethanes, resins for surface coatings, adhesives for shoes and synthetic leather and fabrics, also serve to make stiffeners for shoes and orthopaedic splints, and fully biodegradable compostable bags, sutures and fibres. The chemical structure of a PCL trimer is similar to two cutin monomers, which are inducer for cutinase activity. This knowledge was helpful to find microorganisms which are able to degrade PCL (Premraj and Doble 2005). Although numerous studies (El-Shafei et al. 1998; Howard 2003; Nishida and Tokiwa 1993; To- kiwa et al. 2009) have been reported on the biodegradation of different types of plastics, the published literature on the biodegradation of plastic foams appears to be scarce. Foam biodegradation is carried out by the enzymes associated with some microorganisms like bacteria and fungi (Gautam et al. 2007). Recently, a special focus has been given to the endo- phytic microorganisms that live inside the plant tissue without causing any immediate, overt effects (Hirsch and Braun 1992). Endophytes are known to produce bioactive natural products, which offer an enormous potential for exploitation for medicinal, agricultural and industrial uses (Tan and Zou 2001; Zhang et al. 2006). Special concerns are given to endophytic yeasts isolated from different F. F. Abdel-Motaal Á M. A. El-Sayed (&) Á S. A. El-Zayat Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Aswan University, Aswa ˆn 81528, Egypt e-mail: magradi2000@yahoo.com S. Ito Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi 753-8515, Japan 123 3 Biotech (2014) 4:507–512 DOI 10.1007/s13205-013-0182-9