Heavy Metals Clean Up: The Application of Fungi for Biosorption

Abstract

Heavy metals are quickly becoming a primary environmental pollution concern. Though they can be considered rare and scarce compared to their other metal counterparts, they have a wide range of implications in the modern world. Heavy metals accumulate in our soil, water, and food chain with the rapid anthropogenic release in the ever-growing populace. These accumulations have adverse consequences on human health, with severe medical complications. Fungi belong to a biological group considered the natural sink and the scavengers that degrade the living hydrocarbon. They are known to thrive in adverse conditions, including tolerance to heavy metals. The organisms offer unique advantages due to their morbid nature and the cellular construct they have grown over years of evolution. Various structural and biological mechanisms are ascribed to their survival in a heavy metal environment. As most of the known metal-sequestering fungi belong to yeast and filamentous fungi, in this review, we attempted to analyze the metal-harnessing capacity of these fungal groups.

Keywords:

• Pollution
• fungi
• heavy metals
• biosorption
• bioaccumulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).