Fungi as veritable tool in bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons-polluted wastewater.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of diverse forms have found application in different industries and man heavily depends on these compounds for various purposes. Thus, tonnes of thousands of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are released into various water bodies yearly, resulting in pollution with great effects on aquatic lives, man, and the ecosystem at large. Hydrocarbon pollutions in wastewater are remediated by some physical and chemical methods with most of these techniques leaving a different form of harmful byproducts after the remediation. Furthermore, several species of fungi are important in the microbial bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon in wastewater as they are capable of using these compounds as their source of carbon and energy in the presence of oxygenase. Fungal bioremediation is cost-effective, safer, and ecologically friendly, in addition to fungi producing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon degradative enzymes in high amounts, both intracellularly and extracellularly. Although optimizing the growth requirement of fungi in the field is a major challenge, current advances in the application of fungi in bioremediation address this. This review discusses in detail the technology of fungal bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon in wastewater and its beneficial roles to man and the ecosystem. The benefits of remediating polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-polluted water with fungi and their metabolites via nanotechnology, immobilization, genomic manipulation, and other technologies to generate value-added products are highlighted in this manuscript. Information in this review will provide useful important insights to researchers and industrial professionals in the bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon.

Fungi as veritable tool in current advances in nanobiotechnology.

Fungi have great prospects for synthesis, applications and developing new products in nanotechnology. In recent times, fungi use in nanotechnology is gaining more attention because of the ecological friendly state of their metabolite-mediated nanoparticles, their safety, amenability and applications in diverse fields. The diversity of the metabolites such as enzymes, polysaccharide, polypeptide, protein and other macro-molecules has made fungi a veritable tool for nanoparticles synthesis. Mechanism of fungal nano-biosynthesis from the molecular perspective has been extensively studied through various investigations on its green synthesized metal nanoparticles. Fungal nanobiotechnology has been applied in agricultural, medical and industrial sectors for goods and services improvement and delivery to mankind. Agriculturally, it has found applications in plant disease management and production of environmentally friendly, non-toxic insecticides, fungicides to enhance agricultural production in general. Medically, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, especially of microbial origin have been improved with fungal nanoparticles through more efficient drug delivery systems with great benefits to pharmaceutical industries. This review therefore explored fungal nanobiotechnology; mechanism of synthesis, characterization and potential applications in various fields of human endeavours for goods and services delivery.