Description
Nanotechnology and nanomaterials have important role in several fields, as environment protection, medicine, chemical and food industry. The precious metal nanoparticles, particularly gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can be applied as efficient drug delivery systems, catalysts or biosensors due to their biocompatibility, huge surface area and stable chemical and physical properties. AuNPs can be synthesized in a wide variety of shapes and sizes using several physical, chemical and biological methods, but in many cases they have high energy demand and environmental load. Traditionally, AuNPs have been synthesized by wet synthetic chemical methods, however these chemical methods have several drawbacks such as use of toxic chemicals, stringent synthesis conditions and formation of toxic residues. Therefore, there is an increasing demand to develop environmentally friendly synthesis methods. Biological methods – synthesis of nanoparticles by plant extracts, fungi or bacteria – can overcome these problems (bio-AuNPs, Vágó et al. 2016). In addition several microorganisms, mesophilic and thermophilic fungi appear to be more promising for the production of nanoparticles. The properties of AuNPs are fine tunable by the optimization of the fermentation process. The objective of our consortium is to develop a novel biotechnological method for AuNP synthesis performed by an eco-friendly, “green” process in laboratory or on industrial scale. One of the most important applications of AuNPs is the biosensor development (Chauhan et al., 2016; Salam et al., 2013).
Summary of project results
The precious gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can be applied as efficient drug delivery systems, catalysts or biosensors due to their biocompatibility, huge surface area and stable chemical and physical properties. These AuNPs can be synthesized in a wide variety of shapes and sizes using several physical, chemical and biological methods, but in many cases they have high energy demand and environmental load. Moreover traditionally, AuNPs have been synthesized by wet synthetic chemical methods, but these chemical methods have several drawbacks such as use of toxic chemicals, stringent synthesis conditions and formation of toxic residues. Therefore, there is an increasing demand to develop environmentally friendly synthesis methods. Thus the objective of the project was developing a greener biotechnological method by the optimization of the fermentation of a well defined collection of different microorganisms (microbial consortia) for the production of nanoparticles. As the main result of the project bioAuNP fermentation method were optimized: the isolated, selected and separated bio-AuNPs was performed and applied for promising amplifier of real-time quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensors. These AuNPs based (QCM) biosensors were developed in immunosensors that can be used for sensitive and rapid detection of aflatoxin (a toxic contaminant of plant pathogenic fungus, which is causing agricultural hazards worldwide). The operational parameters and effectiveness of novel bio-AuNPs was compared with chemically synthesized AuNPs. The sensors supplemented with bio-AuNP found more sensitive than the traditionally produced ones for detection of aflatoxin.
Summary of bilateral results
The Department of Micro- and Nanosystems Technology – IMST has very important researches relating to the topic of this project as a result of which special tools are developed as well. The work of the researchers in this project was essential.