Biosynthesis of Nanoparticles by Fungi: Large-Scale Production

Abstract

Nanoparticles are structures in nanoscale with a wide range of applications across various fields of technology, industry, environment, medicine, and science. Increasing demands for NPs caused to develop their production based on chemical and physical approaches, recently. These approaches carry health and S. Karimi Dorcheh Institute of General Microbiology and Microbe Genetics, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany e-mail: sedighk@gmail.com K. Vahabi (*) Institute of General Botany and Plant Physiology, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany e-mail: khabat.v@gmail.com # Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 J.-M. Merillon, K.G. Ramawat (eds.), Fungal Metabolites, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-19456-1_8-1 1 environmental disadvantages with themselves. Need for safer alternatives in large-scale production of NPs ended up with development of eco-friendly methods. Industrial nanobiotechnology takes advantage of biological-based approaches to produce nanomaterial using biological renewable resources. Decreasing energy intake, greenhouse gas (GHG), and hazardous waste production are the main advantages of nanomaterial biosynthesis. In contrast, the other synthesis methods bring environmental drawbacks. Among the nanomaterials, nanoparticles have attracted the attention because of their wide spectrum of application. Microorganisms and in particular bacteria and fungi are used as the biological agents and showed a promising potential for biosynthesis of nanoparticles. Here we highlight different aspects of industrial production of NPs by fungi including advantages and disadvantages. Also, we discuss the application of different technologies in development of high-scale production of NPs by fungi-like protein engineering, metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, systems biology, and downstream processing.