Over the past few years Penicillium brasilianum has been isolated from many different environmental sources as soil isolates, plant endophytes and onion pathogen. All investigated strains share a great ability to produce bioactive secondary metabolites. Different authors have investigated this great capability and here we summarize the metabolic potential and the biological activities related to P. brasilianum’s metabolites with diverse structures. They include secondary metabolites of an alkaloid nature, i.e., 2,5-diketopiperazines, cyclodepsipeptides, meroterpenoids and polyketides. Penicillium brasilianum is also described as a great source of enzymes with biotechnological application potential, which is also highlighted in this review. Additionally, this review will focus on several aspects of Penicillium brasilianum and interesting genomic insights.

The ability to control the assembly of nanoparticles on substrates used in plasmon-enhanced spectroscopy continues to drive research in the field of nanofabrication. Here we describe the use of fungi as soft biotemplates to fabricate nanostructured microtubules with gold and gold-silver nanoparticles with potential applications as sensors and biosensors. In the first step, spores of the filamentous fungus Cladosporium sphaerospermum were inoculated in a suspension of gold nanoparticles, forming stable microtubules of gold nanoparticles during fungus growth. These materials were exposed to a second suspension of silver nanoparticles, resulting in complexes multilayers structures of gold and silver nanoparticles, which were evaluated as substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) using small amounts of thiophenol as probe molecules directly on the microtubules. Both gold and the gold-silver substrates provide the SERS effect.