Abstract
In the recent times, nanomaterials have emerged in the field of biology, medicine, electronics, and agriculture due to their immense applications. Owing to their nanoscale sizes, they present large surface/volume ratio, characteristic structures, and similar dimensions to biomolecules resulting in unique properties for biomedical applications. The chemical and physical methods to synthesize nanoparticles have their own limitations which can be overcome using biological methods for the synthesis. Moreover, through the biogenic synthesis route, the usage of microorganisms has offered a reliable, sustainable, safe, and environmental friendly technique for nanosynthesis. Bacterial, algal, fungal, and yeast cells are known to transport metals from their environment and convert them to elemental nanoparticle forms which are either accumulated or secreted. Additionally, robust nanocarriers have also been developed using viruses. In order to prevent aggregation and promote stabilization of the nanoparticles, capping agents are often secreted during biosynthesis. Microbial nanoparticles find biomedical applications in rapid diagnostics, imaging, biopharmaceuticals, drug delivery systems, antimicrobials, biomaterials for tissue regeneration as well as biosensors. The major challenges in therapeutic applications of microbial nanoparticles include biocompatibility, bioavailability, stability, degradation in the gastro-intestinal tract, and immune response. Thus, the current review article is focused on the microbe-mediated synthesis of various nanoparticles, the different microbial strains explored for such synthesis along with their current and future biomedical applications.
Highlights
Nanoparticles have found increasing industrial and biomedical applications in recent times
Nanoparticles synthesized by microbes prove promising for several biomedical and therapeutic applications due to their controlled biocompatible dimensions and unique properties
Methods of biosynthesis are beneficial since nanoparticles are often coated with a lipid layer/biomolecules that gives physiological solubility and stability, which is essential for biomedical applications and is the bottleneck of other synthetic methods
Summary
Nanoparticles have found increasing industrial and biomedical applications in recent times. Such ready access to a living cell’s interior allows remarkable advantages on the clinical and basic research frontiers These days, with unique optical properties such as fluorescence and surface plasmon resonance (SPR), nanomaterials are achieving increasing attention in biomedical applications (Wang et al, 2007; Boisselier and Astruc, 2009; Aminabad et al, 2019; Elahi et al, 2019) especially in developing optics-based analytical techniques used for bioimaging (Xia, 2008; Chisanga et al, 2019) and biosensing (Kumar et al, 2019; Celiksoy et al, 2020; Noori et al, 2020). The current review article is focused on the microbial-mediated synthesis of various nanoparticles and their applications in multiple sectors, with a particular focus on the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry
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