Abstract
Pyrene, a toxic four-benzene-ring that persists in the ecosystem, is highly resistant to degradation. The goal of the research is to screen, isolate, and identify pyrene-degrading filamentous fungi via the molecular biological identification method. The capabilities of identified isolates in biodegradation and transformation of pyrene were also evaluated. Based on the morphological characterization and sequence alignments, results of neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree from 18S rRNA of F03 revealed that genetic similarity had achieved 99% of homology percentage and identified as Trichoderma sp. Trichoderma sp. F03 was able to degrade pyrene (78%) when culture conditions were set at 100 mg/L initial pyrene concentration in culture medium with pH 5 at 27 degrees C, the use of glucose as a carbon source and polyethylene glycol sorbitan monooleate as a biosurfactant without agitation. Finally, three metabolites, benzoic acid, 3-hydroxybenzoic acid, and acetic acid, were detected during the pyrene degradation process by using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS).