ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Hashem Al-Sheikh1 and Ramy S. Yehia1,2
1Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, King Faisal University, Al-Hassa 31982, Saudi Arabia.
2Department of Botany and Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2015;9(1):433-439
© The Author(s). 2015
Received: 06/04/2014| Accepted: 19/08/2014| Published: 31/03/2015
Abstract

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been synthesized and characterized in the current study, and evaluated in terms of their use for the decolorization of methylene blue dye. AgNPs were successfully prepared using a green chemistry process from isolated endophytic fungus. Nine fungal endophytes were isolated from the leaves of Ocimum balilicumL. The four major isolates of Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp., Cladosporium sp., and Alternaria sp. were tested for the extracellular synthesis of AgNPs. The formation of AgNPs was initially observed as a change in color and was subsequently confirmed by Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, which showed a characteristic absorption peak for silver at 420 nm. Aspergillus sp. was determined to be the most potent producer of AgNPs and was subjected to further characterization. Transmission electron microscopy studies showed that the AgNPs were 4–15 nm in size. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed the crystalline pattern of the AgNPs. Based on the sequences of the ribosomal DNA, internal transcribed spacer regions, the major endophytic species was identified as Aspergillus niger and the sequence data were submitted to the GenBank [GenBank: LC009511.1]. Further analysis showed that AgNPs efficiently decolorized methylene blue dye up to 96% within 72 h of incubation. AgNPs could therefore be used as highly economical agents for the rapid removal of dye-based pollutants from the environment and could also be used for the control of other reducible contaminants.

Keywords

Endopytic fungi, Silver nanoparticles, Biosynthesis, Dye decolorization

Article Metrics

Article View: 762

Share This Article

© The Author(s) 2015. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.