Biosurfactant Producing Microbes and their Potential Applications: A Review

Abstract

Biosurfactants are surface-active biomolecules produced by microbes (bacteria, fungi, and yeast) and have several advantages over the chemical surfactants, such as lower toxicity, higher biodegradability, better environmental compatibility, higher foaming, high selectivity, and specific activity under extreme conditions such as temperature, pH, and salinity. Almost all the surfactants now available in the market are chemically synthesized. Recently, attention toward the biosurfactants was doubled, which is mainly due to their wide range of functional properties and the diverse synthetic capabilities of the microbes. Microbial biosurfactants are found to have a wide range of applications in environmental protection, which include enhancing oil recovery, controlling oil spills, biodegradation, and detoxification of oil-contaminated industrial effluents and soils. Biosurfactants produced by microorganisms have potential applications in pharmaceutical/medicine, food, cosmetic, pesticide, oil, and biodegradation industries. In this review article, we concentrated on three important aspects such as various types of biosurfactants, the group of microbes involved in the production of biosurfactants, and application of microbial biosurfactants.