1 Introduction
The environment comprises complex variables that include air, water, and land.
Their helpful association forms a basis for the presence of the human being along
with other living things, namely, plants, animals, and microbes. But, knowledge and
scientific advances in the form of industrial societies have contributed to severe
environmental contamination of air, soil, and water, which are considered to be an
indispensable part of human life. Increasing humane population, development, and
rapid mechanizations are recognized as important challenges to the groundwater
resources management in developing countries (Selvi et al. 2019).
Heavy metal pollution in the environment causing serious health menaces to the
ecosystem due to its various levels of accumulation and toxicity (Tangahu et al.
2011). Although there are different heavy metal remediation methods, biological
sorption has become a promising alternative to the existing expensive methods and
has more advantages mainly in terms of cost, environmental benignity, easy and safe
operation, green chemistry concept, possible recovery, and better removal at low
concentration (Sharma et al. 2018). The most well-known biological sources for the
utilization of heavy metal sorption methods are plants, fungi, bacteria, and algae
(Kaur et al. 2019). Among these, the fungal biomass has been perceived for the
overwhelming of heavy metals sorption on polluted environments due to their nature
of cell wall composition which comprises of 80–90% of polysaccharides, proteins,
and lipids with numerous important functional groups that can be utilized in metal
binding (Dhankhar and Hooda 2011). They likewise regularly show stamped resilience toward metals and other antagonistic conditions, for example, low pH
(Simonescu and Ferdeş 2012).
Fungal biomass has received a lot of consideration as a biosorbent due to a high
level of cell wall material, which increases the variety of functional groups, engaged
with heavy metal binding, and in this way builds the metal sequestration capacity of
organisms (Dhankhar and Hooda 2011). However, nowadays, this technology is not
extensively applied to all over the world and needs to be given much attention and
extent. As a result, the current review mainly focused on various aspects of the
removal of heavy metals using different fungus, factor influencing, and biosorption
mechanisms as well as functional groups involved in biosorption.
2 Mycoremediation
Mycoremediation is one part of bioremediation that uses fungi to restore, degrade,
and repair contaminated environments (Mani and Kumar 2013; Asiriuwa et al. 2013;
Hamba and Tamiru 2016). Mycoremediation is using fungi in bioremediation, and
the long threads (hyphae) interact with soil particles, roots, and rocks forming a
filamentous body which are known to tolerate heavy metals and can adjust themselves to grow under various extreme conditions of pH, temperature, nutrient
356
A. Ayele et al.
The environment comprises complex variables that include air, water, and land.
Their helpful association forms a basis for the presence of the human being along
with other living things, namely, plants, animals, and microbes. But, knowledge and
scientific advances in the form of industrial societies have contributed to severe
environmental contamination of air, soil, and water, which are considered to be an
indispensable part of human life. Increasing humane population, development, and
rapid mechanizations are recognized as important challenges to the groundwater
resources management in developing countries (Selvi et al. 2019).
Heavy metal pollution in the environment causing serious health menaces to the
ecosystem due to its various levels of accumulation and toxicity (Tangahu et al.
2011). Although there are different heavy metal remediation methods, biological
sorption has become a promising alternative to the existing expensive methods and
has more advantages mainly in terms of cost, environmental benignity, easy and safe
operation, green chemistry concept, possible recovery, and better removal at low
concentration (Sharma et al. 2018). The most well-known biological sources for the
utilization of heavy metal sorption methods are plants, fungi, bacteria, and algae
(Kaur et al. 2019). Among these, the fungal biomass has been perceived for the
overwhelming of heavy metals sorption on polluted environments due to their nature
of cell wall composition which comprises of 80–90% of polysaccharides, proteins,
and lipids with numerous important functional groups that can be utilized in metal
binding (Dhankhar and Hooda 2011). They likewise regularly show stamped resilience toward metals and other antagonistic conditions, for example, low pH
(Simonescu and Ferdeş 2012).
Fungal biomass has received a lot of consideration as a biosorbent due to a high
level of cell wall material, which increases the variety of functional groups, engaged
with heavy metal binding, and in this way builds the metal sequestration capacity of
organisms (Dhankhar and Hooda 2011). However, nowadays, this technology is not
extensively applied to all over the world and needs to be given much attention and
extent. As a result, the current review mainly focused on various aspects of the
removal of heavy metals using different fungus, factor influencing, and biosorption
mechanisms as well as functional groups involved in biosorption.
2 Mycoremediation
Mycoremediation is one part of bioremediation that uses fungi to restore, degrade,
and repair contaminated environments (Mani and Kumar 2013; Asiriuwa et al. 2013;
Hamba and Tamiru 2016). Mycoremediation is using fungi in bioremediation, and
the long threads (hyphae) interact with soil particles, roots, and rocks forming a
filamentous body which are known to tolerate heavy metals and can adjust themselves to grow under various extreme conditions of pH, temperature, nutrient
356
A. Ayele et al.