Fungal Mediated Synthesis of Nanoparticles: Characterization and Bioapplications

Abstract

Metal nanoparticles have received a great deal of attention from researchers in recent decades due to their significant impact on a variety of important applications such as biomedicine, agriculture, energy, electronics, and sensing. Biosynthesis is another alternative approach in the synthesis of clean, reliable, cost-effective, and green approaches that interest nano and microbial biotechnologies, in addition to many conventional procedures reported for synthesizing metal nanoparticles. This chapter describes the studies relating to fungal mediated synthesis of metal nanoparticles, as well as their biomedical, catalytic, and agriculture applications. These fungi-based biomolecules undergo highly controlled assembly in the synthesis of suitable metal nanoparticles with different shapes, charges, and sizes. The formation mechanism has not yet been completely explained, in spite of the fact that it is accepted that fungal biomolecules are mostly used in the process. In fact, fungi are efficient biomolecules used in the synthesis of metal nanoparticles that show a wide range of bioapplications such as anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, antifungal, antioxidant, etc. This chapter highlights the potential use of fungi as a novel source for the green synthesis of metal nanoparticles with enhanced biomedical applications.