Characterization and bioactivity of Fusarium incarnatum Nano-chitosan

Abstract

• Marine fungus Fusarium incarnatum optimized for chitosan production. • Nano-chitosan synthesized via ionic gelation, size range 10–80 nm. • Characterization of Nano-chitosan is confirmed by FTIR, XRD, and TEM analyses. • Nano-chitosan exhibits strong antibacterial and antiviral activity against HSV-1. • Nano-chitosan show potent cytotoxicity on Mcf7 and HepG2 cancer cell lines. The current study focused on the synthesis, characterization and biological activities of Nano-chitosan (NC) derived from the marine origin fungus, Fusarium incarnatum strain Yassmine. Initial screening of various media evaluated isolate 20S as a high biomass producer. Consequently, the Plackett–Burman (PB) design was employed to optimize growth conditions, leading to a maximum fungal biomass of 3.54 g/mL, which represents a 2.6-fold increase over basal conditions. The NC was obtained from the fungal chitosan via a standard chemical conversion then characterized using advanced techniques. The FTIR spectroscopy confirmed the presence of characteristic functional groups. The XRD pattern indicated a well-ordered crystalline structure, as well as the TEM micrographs revealed uniform, spherical nanoparticles (NP) with sizes ranging from 38 to 77 nm. Biological assays demonstrated that the fungal NC possesses significant bioactivities. In particular, it exhibited a promising antimicrobial activity against several bacterial pathogens and a notable reduction in HSV-1 viral activity from 100 to 65.66%. Effectively, the NC showed a strong cytotoxic effect on human breast cancer (Mcf7) and liver cancer (HepG2) cells, with IC50​values of 71.13 ± 1.47 and 110 ± 1.6, respectively. Conclusively, these findings suggest that NC from marine fungus-derived is a valuable and safe biomaterial with promising applications in biomedical field.