Inherent antioxidant activity and high yield production of antioxidants in Phanerochaete chrysosporium

• We highlight a novel role of Phanerochaete chrysosporium as antioxidants.
• The extracts show a dose-dependent antioxidant activity and ROS scavenging ability.
• Good correlations between antioxidant activities and antioxidants are observed.
• Stimulation biosynthesis of antioxidants response to Cd exposure is found.
• Enzymatic and non-enzymatic scavengers are found involving in antioxidant activity.

Incremental reactive oxygen species (ROS) under adversity environment could cause oxidative damages to microorganisms during environmental applications. In this study, we highlight a novel role of P. chrysosporium as antioxidants. The P. chrysosporium extracts possessed remarkable antioxidant activity, expressing a dose-dependent total antioxidant activity and accompanied with high reactive oxygen radical (O2–, OH and H2O2) scavenging capacity. In addition, it was established that, various compounds, such as antioxidant enzymes (catalase, superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase) and low-molecular-weight antioxidant components (glutathione, phenolics and flavonoids) existed steadily in P. chrysosporium. Linear regression analysis and Pearson correlation coefficient analysis demonstrated that enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants took part in processes and acted as “antioxidant network” in P. chrysosporium by confirming with the significant correlation coefficients among the tested antioxidants. Furthermore, those tested antioxidants were found sensitive response to Cd exposure, a 2.78-fold and 2.35-fold of stimulation has been found in SOD and phenolics, respectively, which provide a novel dimension to the involvement of antioxidants in the antioxidant defense system of P. chrysosporium. The paper proposes a new validation procedure to specifically validate the admirable tolerance and high efficiency of P. chrysosporium in environmental treatment application, taking advantage of the remarkable antioxidant activity.