Recent Trends on Biosurfactants With Antimicrobial Activity Produced by Bacteria Associated With Human Health: Different Perspectives on Their Properties, Challenges, and Potential Applications

Abstract

The attention towards the bacteria associated with human health is growing more and more, above all regarding the bacteria that inhabit the niches offered by the human body, i.e., the gastrointestinal tract, skin, vaginal environment, and lungs. Among the secondary metabolites released by microorganisms associated with human health, little consideration is given to the biosurfactants, molecules with both hydrophobic and hydrophilic nature. Their role in the complex human environment is not only the mere biosurfactant function, but they could also control the microbiota through the quorum sensing system and the antimicrobial activity. These functions protect them and, accordingly, the human body principally from microbial and fungal pathogens. Consequently, nowadays, biosurfactants are emerging as promising bioactive molecules due to their very different structures, biological functions, low toxicity, higher biodegradability, and versatility. Therefore, this review provides a comprehensive perspective of biosurfactants with antimicrobial activity produced by bacteria associated with the human body and related to everything human beings are in contact with, e.g., food, beverages, and food-waste dumping sites. For the first time, the role of an “-omic” approach is highlighted to predict gene products for biosurfactant production, and an overview of the available gene sequences is reported. Besides, antimicrobial biosurfactants’ features, challenges, and potential applications in the biomedical, food, and nutraceutical industries are discussed.

Biosurfactants: Potential and Eco-Friendly Material for Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Safety—A Review

“…Microbes are extensively used in the degradation of organic matter, because of the extensive use of microbes in degradation in recent decades, biosurfactants were widely used in bioremediation and biodegradation; it is conceivable to use their benefits to increase the compost quality too. Therefore, it is understood that biosurfactants, which are amphipathic microbial compounds, may lower liquid-solid surface tension and increase organic matter bioremediation [213]. Furthermore, boosting bacterial growth in the presence of biosurfactant enhanced organic matter decomposition.…”

Biosurfactants: The Potential Green Surfactants in the 21st Century

“…The antimicrobial activity of several biosurfactants has received considerable attention in recent years [38,50]. Reid et al, [51,52] described a possible probiotic role for the biosurfactant producing lactobacilli in the restoration and maintenance of healthy urogenital and intestinal tracts, protection of skin and gastrointestinal (GI) systems [53], conferring protection against pathogens and suggested a reliable alternative treatment and preventive regimen to antibiotics in the near future.…”

“…The key role of biosurfactants is to control the microbiota through the quorum sensing systems [50] and the microbial activity. These features protect them and consequently, the human body principally from microbial and fungal pathogens, which makes the biosurfactants as promising bioactive molecules.…”

Tapping the Role of Microbial Biosurfactants in Pesticide Remediation: An Eco-Friendly Approach for Environmental Sustainability

“…Bacillus and Pseudomonas species are the most investigated lipopeptide producers, while Bacillus subtilis produces surfactin ( Janek et al, 2021 ), the most potent lipopeptide known ( Kumar et al, 2021a ). Lipopeptides are the type of natural product produced by non-ribosomal peptide synthases (NRPS) ( De Giani et al, 2021 ), which are huge multifunctional enzyme clusters ( Williams and Trindade, 2017 ; Lamilla et al, 2021 ). Surfactin is considered one of the most potent biosurfactants ( Meena et al, 2021 ) composed of cyclic lipopeptides with seven amino acid ringed structures linked to a fatty acid chain through lactone linkage ( Figure 3 ; Onaizi, 2018 ; Sarwar et al, 2018 ).…”