Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2010;672:316-23. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4419-5979-9_24.
Even after forty years of its discovery by Arima et al, surfactin, a potent lipopeptide biosurfactant, still attracts attention and fancy of the applied microbiologists and biotechnologists worldwide, mainly due to its versatile bioactive properties and potential industrial implications. Starting from its first invented characteristic as an inhibitor of fibrin clot formation coupled with its significant ability to reduce surface tension of water, it has been credited with antifungal, antiviral, antitumor, insecticidal and antimycoplasma activities. These properties of therapeutic and commercial importance and its recent use as an enhanced oil recovery and a bioremediation agent make it a truly versatile biomolecule, the commercial potential of which could not be fully realized, particularly as a therapeutic agent, mainly because of its hemolytic property. This chapter thus addresses the issues related to the versatile nature of the most studied microbial surfactant, surfactin and its potential commercial and health-care applications.
即使在 Arima 等人发现它四十年后，表面活性剂，一种有效的脂肽生物表面活性剂，仍然吸引了全球应用微生物学家和生物技术学家的关注和青睐，主要是因为它具有多种生物活性特性和潜在的工业意义。从它作为纤维蛋白凝块形成抑制剂的第一个发明特性开始，再加上它显著降低水的表面张力的能力，它就已经被证明具有抗真菌、抗病毒、抗肿瘤、杀虫和抗支原体的活性。这些具有治疗和商业重要性的特性，以及它最近被用作提高石油采收率和生物修复剂的用途，使它成为一种真正多功能的生物分子，其商业潜力尚未得到充分实现，特别是作为一种治疗剂，主要是因为它的溶血特性。因此，本章讨论了研究最多的微生物表面活性剂表面活性剂的多功能性质及其潜在的商业和医疗保健应用相关的问题。
