Microbial Biosurfactant: A New Frontier for Sustainable Agriculture and Pharmaceutical Industries

Abstract

In the current scenario of changing climatic conditions and rising global population, there is always a need to explore novel, efficient, and economical natural products for the benefit of human kind. Biosurfactant is one of the latest explored microbial biomolecules that have been used in numerous fields, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food processing, and environment-cleaning industries as raw material, lubrication, wetting, foaming softening, making emulsions, and stabilizing dispersions. The amphiphilic nature of biosurfactant biomolecules showed great advantage, distributing themselves into two immiscible surfaces by reducing interfacial surface tension and increasing the solubility of hydrophobic compounds. Furthermore, their eco-friendly nature, low or even no toxic nature, durability at higher temperatures, and wide range of pH fluctuations making the microbial surfactants preferable compared to their chemical counterparts. Additionally, the biosurfactants can obviate the oxidation flow by eliciting the antioxidant property, antimicrobial, anticancer activity, and drug delivery system, further broadening their applicability in the food, pharmaceutical, and pharma industries. Nowadays, biosurfactant has been broadly utilized to improve the soil quality by improving the concentration of trace elements and mixed with pesticides or applied singly on the plant surfaces for plant disease management. In the present review, we summarise the latest aspect of microbial synthesized biosurfactant compounds, limiting factors of biosurfactant production, and their application in improving soil quality, plant disease management.

Bioformulation of Bacillus proteolyticus MITWPUB1 and its biosurfactant to control the growth of phytopathogen Sclerotium rolfsii for the crop Brassica juncea var local, as a sustainable approach

“…Any disruptions in fungal mycelia or their structural integrity may impact the ability to spread and can be the reason for their non-survivability as fungal mycelia perform a vital function in the asexual cycle that permit the organisms to colonize and live. The amphiphilic properties of BSs enable them to connect with plasma membranes, bind to pathogens, and release their internal contents, leading to cellular lysis and rupture (Crouzet et al, 2020;Kumar et al, 2021). The phospholipid bilayer of the cell membrane is disrupted by mycelial thinning, which can result in the loss of electrolytes, protein, and DNA (Borah et al, 2016;Monnier et al, 2019).…”

Trends in mitigation of industrial waste: Global health hazards, environmental implications and waste derived economy for environmental sustainability

“…Biosurfactants derived from organic sources exhibited several properties such as reduction in surface tension and high emulsification capacity. The surfactant extracted from organic compounds is amphiphilic in nature with a wide range of promising applications (Akbari et al, 2018;Kumar et al, 2021a).…”

Marinobacter: A case study in bioelectrochemical chassis evaluation

“…While wax esters have received much attention as a broadly useful class of molecules, lipids with biosurfactant properties are also produced by Marinobacter . Biosurfactants have a wide range of uses in fields such as agriculture, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and come in a variety of types, including glycolipids and phospholipids (Kumar et al, 2021). Rhamnolipids, a type of glycolipid, have been investigated in several Marinobacter species (Haque et al, 2020; Tripathi et al, 2019; Twigg et al, 2019).…”