Notice of RetractionCapability of Polychlorinated Biophenyl (PCBs) Degrading Fungi Segregated from Sediments

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

Four strains of fungi isolated from the sediments of badly contaminated Li-Cun River were studied to investigate their ability to remove 6 target PCBs. Having different viability at different conditions, these 4 fungi all showed relatively better PCB degradation capability and higher efficiency for total PCB removal in the absence of the ligninolytic enzymes. The findings that chloride concentration changes and some acids are generated as the metabolic products contribute to our understanding of PCBs degradation pathways. Combinations of different PCB concentrations and fresh fungi weight inoculated were attempted to achieve maximum efficiency. After the bio-treatment, the concentrations of PCBs are significantly reduced with the chloride ion concentration increasing slightly. Not only as a group but also as a unit these 4 fungi show high capability in the PCBs degradation process.