*Correspondence: tribedi.prosun@gmail.com (Received: April 28, 2021; accepted: June 21, 2021) Citaton: Sarker RK, Paul P, Das S, Chaterjee S, Chakraborty P, Tribedi P. Exploraton of Strategies for the Enhanced Biodegradaton of Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) by A Soil Bacterium Enterobacter Cloacae Aks7. J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2021;15(3):1266- 1278. doi: 10.22207/JPAM.15.3.16 © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This artcle is distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distributon, and reproducton in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creatve Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Sarker et al. | J Pure Appl Microbiol | 15(3):1266-1278 | September 2021 Artcle 7005 | htps://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.15.3.16 Print ISSN: 0973-7510; E-ISSN: 2581-690X ReseARCh ARtiCle OPeN ACCess www.microbiologyjournal.org 1266 Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology Exploraton of Strategies for the Enhanced Biodegradaton of Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) by A Soil Bacterium Enterobacter Cloacae Aks7 Ranojit Kumar Sarker, Payel Paul, Sharmistha Das, Sudipta Chaterjee, Poulomi Chakraborty and Prosun Tribedi* Microbial Ecology Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, The Neota University, Sarisha - 743 368, West Bengal, India. Abstract In the context of sustainable bioremediaton of Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), in this study, several strategies were explored to enhance the LDPE degradaton by the bacterium Enterobacter cloacae AKS7. Initally, Mineral oil and Tween 80 were used to test whether they could modulate microbial colonizaton and polymer degradaton by AKS7. Results indicated Mineral oil could increase microbial colonizaton and LDPE degradaton whereas Tween 80 compromised the same. Since LDPE holds hydrophobic characteristcs, the organism showing higher cell-surface hydrophobicity could adhere efciently to the polymer. Thus, the organism AKS7 was grown in media with diferent concentratons of glucose and ammonium sulphate to exhibit diferences in cell-surface hydrophobicity. We notced that with increasing cell-surface hydrophobicity, the microbial colonizaton and LDPE degradaton got enhanced considerably. The observatons indicated that cell-surface hydrophobicity promoted microbial colonizaton to LDPE that increased the degree of biodegradaton. Besides, LDPE flms were photo- oxidized before microbial exposure which showed that AKS7 could degrade ultra-violet (UV) treated LDPE more profciently compared to the UV-untreated polymer. Moreover, AKS7 could colonize more efectvely to the UV-treated LDPE in contrast to the untreated LDPE. Furthermore, it was observed that UV exposure increased the carbonyl bond index of the polymer which got utlized by the organism efciently thereby increasing the polymer degradaton. Hence, the observatons indicated that efectve microbial colonizaton to UV-treated LDPE flms exhibited a promising metabolic actvity that could show an enhanced degradaton of LDPE. Therefore, AKS7 warrants to be considered as a promising organism for enhanced degradaton of LDPE. Keywords: LDPE, Enterobacter cloacae AKS7, Bioremediaton, Microbial colonizaton, Cell-surface hydrophobicity, Carbonyl bond index