Nanomaterials Derived from Fungal Sources—Is It the New Hype?

Abstract

Greener alternatives to synthetic polymers are constantly being investigated and sought after. Chitin is a natural polysaccharide that gives structural support to crustacean shells, insect exoskeletons, and fungal cell walls. Like cellulose, chitin resides in nanosized structural elements that can be isolated as nanofibers and nanocrystals by various top-down approaches, targeted at disintegrating the native construct. Chitin has, however, been largely overshadowed by cellulose when discussing the materials aspects of the nanosized components. This Perspective presents a thorough overview of chitin-related materials research with an analytical focus on nanocomposites and nanopapers. The red line running through the text emphasizes the use of fungal chitin that represents several advantages over the more popular crustacean sources, particularly in terms of nanofiber isolation from the native matrix. In addition, many β-glucans are preserved in chitin upon its isolation from the fungal matrix, enabling new horizons for various engineering solutions.

Material Function of Mycelium-Based Bio-Composite: A Review

“…Crustacean chitin typically binds with sclerotized proteins and minerals and contains minimal residual protein. Such a difference makes the isolation procedure for fungal chitin nanofibers very simple, requiring just brief mechanical agitation in a kitchen blender after a mild alkaline treatment to remove proteins (Fazli Wan Nawawi et al, 2019;Nawawi et al, 2020). However, the glucan associates with fungal chitin can occur in quantities exceeding the chitin content itself (Hackman, 1960; (Haneef et al, 2017).…”

“…In recent years, mycelium gains more interest in academics and commerce studies because of its low energy consumption in growth, zero-byproduct, and broad potential application (Holt et al, 2012;Pelletier et al, 2013;Jones et al, 2017;Nawawi et al, 2020) (Figure 1). Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a network of fine white filaments of 1-30 μm in diameter, which spreads out from a single spore into every corner of the substrate (Fricker et al, 2007;Islam et al, 2017).…”

Crab vs. Mushroom: A Review of Crustacean and Fungal Chitin in Wound Treatment

“…Fungal β-glucans, such as lentinan from L. edodes (shiitake), schizophyllan from S. commune (split gill), zymosan from S. cereviase (baker's yeast), pleuran from P. ostreatus (oyster), and ganoderan from G. lucidum (reishii), have also been extensively studied due to the human immune system's ability to recognize them, promoting immune stimulation, antibacterial, antitumor, anticancer, and antioxidant properties [92][93][94][95]. These findings, coupled with the varying chitin, chitosan, and polysaccharide profiles of the over 5.1 million species of fungi in existence [96] and recent advances in fungal material technology [7,14,17,[97][98][99][100][101], suggest that fungi-derived wound treatments warrant further investigation. In particular, the native chitin-β-glucan composite architecture of fungal chitin could be utilized to achieve scaffolds exceeding the mechanical performance of crustacean chitin [17] and novel antibacterial properties resulting from composite dressings incorporating naturally generated complexes of fungal chitin, chitosan, β-glucans, and exopolysaccharides could pave the way for new low-cost, natural, and mass-producible dressing technologies.…”

Characterization of Novel Biopolymer Blend Mycocel from Plant Cellulose and Fungal Fibers

“…The attention has been focused also on membranes based on chitosan blended with other biomacromolecules such as alginate, cellulose, collagen, gelatin, keratin, sericin, and soy protein [6]. Chitin-related materials from fungal sources with focus on nanocomposites and nanopapers have been suggested as greener alternative to synthetic polymers [7]. Fungal chitin-glucan nanopapers have manufactured from chitin nanofibrils, which is a native composite material (chitin-glucan) combining the strength of chitin and the toughness of glucan.…”