Fungal Nanobionics - Principle, Advances and Applications

Nanotechnology is the science of research and development at the nanoscale (i.e. 10-9 m) at least in one dimension. The capability of nanotechnology is often known to revolve around nanoparticles. The core versatility of the nanoparticles is the fact that they exhibit more significant properties than that of bulk counterparts. Nanobionics is the structural and functional study of biological systems which serve as a model for the design and engineering of materials and machines at the cistron level. Fungi have emerged as important systems for the synthesis of nanoparticles due to the production of extracellular enzymes which can utilize heavy metal ions and produce nanoparticles, easy to isolate and subculture on synthetic media due to low nutritional requirements, high wall binding capacity, simpler biomass handling and extracellular synthesis of nanoparticle help in easy downstream processing. Fungi can produce nanoparticles both extracellularly as well as intracellularly. For example, the synthesis of silver nanoparticles has been reported utilizing many ubiquitous fungal species including Trichoderma, Fusarium, Penicillium, Rhizoctonia, Pleurotus and Aspergillus.Extracellular synthesis has been shown by Trichoderma viridae while intracellular synthesis was shown to occur in a Verticillium species, and in Neurospora crassa whereas the synthesis of gold nanoparticles has been reported utilizing Fusarium, Neurospora, Verticillium, yeasts, and Aspergillus. In this chapter, we further focus on the applications of fungal nanobionics in various industries