Simple Recovery of Intracellular Gold Nanoparticles from Peanut Seedling Roots

Fabrication of inorganic nanomaterials via a biological route witnesses the formation either extracellularly, intracellulary or both. Whereas extracellular formation of these nanomaterials is cherished owing to their easy and economical extraction and purification processes; the intracellular formation of nanomaterials, due to the lack of a proper recovery protocol has always been dreaded, as the extraction processes used so far were tedious, costly, time consuming and often resulting in very low recovery. The aim of the present study was to overcome the problems related with the extraction and recovery of intracellularly synthesized inorganic nanoparticles, and to devise a method to increasing the output, the shape, size, composition and dispersal of nanoparticles is not altered. Water proved to be much better system as it provided well dispersed, stable gold nanoparticles and higher recovery. This is the first report, where intracellular nanoparticles have been recovered using a very cost-effective and eco-friendly approach.