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Microbial Biosurfactants: From an Environmental Application Point of View

Rengathavasi Thavasi*
Polytechnic Institute of New York University, 6 Metrotech Center, Brooklyn, New York 11201, USA
Corresponding Author :	Rengathavasi Thavasi Polytechnic Institute of New York University 6 Metrotech Center, Brooklyn New York 11201, USA Tel: +1 718-260-3960 E-mail: hydrobact@gmail.com
Received August 26, 2011; Accepted October 27, 2011; Published October 28, 2011
Citation: Thavasi R (2011) Microbial Biosurfactants: From an Environmental Application Point of View. J Bioremed Biodegrad 2:104e. doi:10.4172/2155-6199.1000104e
Copyright: © 2011 Thavasi R. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Abstract

Microbial biosurfactants are extracellular compounds produced by microbes such as bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes when grown in culture medium containing hydrophobic/hydrophilic substrates. Biosurfactants are surface active molecules having hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties as their constituents which allow them to interact at interfaces and reduce the surface tension. Biosurfactants are classified into many groups based on their chemical composition as fatty acids, glycolipids, glycolipopeptides, glycoproteins, lipopeptides, phospholipids, polymeric and particulate biosurfactants [1]. The chemical diversity of biosurfactants make them a source for green chemicals having many potential applications for the environment. As compared to their chemical/synthetic counterparts, biosurfactants have unique properties such as high activity, less/or no toxicity, biodegradability and ease of production from renewable resources.