Applications of microbial biosurfactants in human health and environmental sustainability: a narrative review

Abstract

Biosurfactants are amphipathic molecules produced by bacteria, yeast, and fungi as secondary metabolites. Several microbes including Candida, Pseudomonas, Bacillus, Mycobacterium, and Acinetobacter, are known to produce biosurfactants. Researchers have recently focused on biosurfactants due to their potential therapeutic, industrial, and environmental applications. They are useful in wide range of applications such as antimicrobial, anti-biofilm, anticancer treatments, oil recovery, bioremediation, phytoremediation, food processing, and hydrocarbon degradation. Due to the overuse and misuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics, there is a continuous rise of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Biosurfactants may be viable replacements to standard antibiotics in this context, and their prospective uses in biomedical science may be a bright spot in the post-antibiotic era. Biosurfactants are widely applied as drug delivery systems and coating agents. Biosurfactants have various advantages over chemical surfactants including greater biodegradability, low toxicity, high specificity, eco-friendly properties, and working ability at a wide range of temperatures, pH values, and salinities. Research is being conducted to screen strains with higher biosurfactant-producing abilities and engineered microbes are also used to increase the yield. Some actinobacterial strains such as Rhodococcus can also produce trehalolipid biosurfactants as secondary metabolites. Actinobacterial biosurfactants are useful for bioremediation and the cosmetic industry. In the case of biosurfactant production; cheaper substrates such as waste raw materials can be utilized. The major limitation of using biosurfactants is that their production cost is much higher than that of chemical surfactants, and downstream processing is also difficult. In this review, the most recent applications of biosurfactants are summarized and discussed.

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