Hydroquinone at initial concentration of 4541 μM was completely removed within 56 h of treatment; while 75% of hydroquinone was removed in fungal cultures when the initial concentration was 7265 μM after the same time of treatment. These results demonstrate that Penicillium var. halophenolicum can remove hydroquinone to undetectable concentrations by HPLC method. Additional studies were done to assess the complete biological conversion of hydroquinone to CO2 and H2O by the P. chrysogenum strain, ��-catenin signaling using

the OxiTop® respirometric system. The OxiTop® respirometric system is a simple, batch device, which is appropriate and sensitive for determination and analysis of wastewater biological oxygen demand (BOD). Fig. 5 shows hydroquinone BOD data from the respirometric study. Each BOD value was corrected for endogenous respiration (i.e., BOD obtained from the fungal blank). Since the biodegradation test was carried out within a brown dark bottle container and in the absence of light, the possible existence of photodegradation was withdrawn. The 5-day BOD for the initial concentrations of 4541 and 7265 μM of hydroquinone was 440 mg/l and 720 mg/l, respectively. The

initial mineralization of the biodegraded hydroquinone is slightly lower at the initial concentration of 7265 μM than that at 4541 μM up to the first day. This fact suggests that hydroquinone at high concentrations induces smaller Adriamycin molecular weight rates of respiration than low initial concentrations and agrees with the observation that hydroquinone

can reduce enzyme activity of microbial biomass [8]. Finally, we tested whether P. chrysogenum could degrade hydroquinone from to levels that were non-genotoxic to cultured human cells. HCT116 and fibroblasts cells were thus exposed for 24 h to fungal treated samples containing different concentrations of hydroquinone as the result of progressive degradation of this compound by P. chrysogenum and then subjected to the alkaline comet assay protocol; controls were provided by cells exposed to plain medium without hydroquinone for the same duration ( Table 2 and Fig. 6). As expected for a genotoxic agent, metabolites coming from an incomplete degradation of hydroquinone still might led to significant DNA damage in HCT116 or fibroblasts cells. HCT116 cells exposed to 86.3, 108.1 and 274.3 μM of remaining hydroquinone after fungal treatment showed in the range between 40% and 80% of total DNA fractured enough to leave the cell nucleus and form the comet tail ( Fig. 6 and Table 2). In the case of fibroblasts, a remaining hydroquinone concentration of 86.3 μM did not induce a noticeable increase in DNA damage, while with 274.3 μM more than 80% of DNA in the comet tail was observed ( Table 2). However, when hydroquinone was either fully degraded (0 μM) or degraded almost to completion (33.6 μM final concentration) by P.