The treatment of wastewater is an expensive and energy-extensive practice that not only ensures the power generation requirements to sustain the current energy demands of an increasing human population but also aids in the subsequent removal of enormous quantities of wastewater that need to be treated within the environment. Thus, renewable energy source-based wastewater treatment is one of the recently developing techniques to overcome power generation and environmental contamination issues. In wastewater treatment, microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology has demonstrated a promising potential to evolve as a sustainable approach, with the simultaneous recovery of energy and nutrients to produce bioelectricity that harnesses the ability of electrogenic microbes to oxidize organic contaminants present in wastewater. Since traditional wastewater treatment has various limitations, sustainable implementations of MFCs might be a feasible option in wastewater treatment, green electricity production, biohydrogen synthesis, carbon sequestration, and environmentally sustainable sewage treatment. In MFCs, the electrochemical treatment mechanism is based on anodic oxidation and cathodic reduction reactions, which have been considerably improved by the last few decades of study. However, electricity production by MFCs remains a substantial problem for practical implementations owing to the difficulty in balancing yield with overall system upscaling. This review discusses the developments in MFC technologies, including improvements to their structural architecture, integration with different novel biocatalysts and biocathode, anode, and cathode materials, various microbial community interactions and substrates to be used, and the removal of contaminants. Furthermore, it focuses on providing critical insights and analyzing various types, processes, applications, challenges, and futuristic aspects of wastewater treatment-related MFCs and thus sustainable resource recovery. With appropriate planning and further studies, we look forward to the industrialization of MFCs in the near future, with the idea that this will lead to greener fuels and a cleaner environment for all of mankind.

The modern agricultural system is facing the unprecedented task of contriving the extensive demand for agrarian production owing to population explosion and global climate change. The employment of Nanotechnology in agriculture has gained immense interest in recent times for the development of sustainable agricultural technologies and environmental remediation strategies. Nanotechnology pertains to the employment of nanoparticles and furnishes the potential to fabricate novel materials and products possessing improved quality. The nanomaterials may be used as; nanosensors, nanocides, nanofertilizers, nanobarcodes, and nano-remediators, which play a significant role in modern agricultural practices. However, the physical and chemical processes of nanoparticle production is neither economical nor environmentally sustainable. Therefore, the need for green or biogenic nanoparticles obtained from plants, bacteria, fungi or their metabolites has emerged as novel, sustainable, economical, biocompatible, and eco-friendly technology. In this perspective, the production and sources of biogenic nanoparticles and their implication in agro-ecosystems for crop productivity, soil health management, biocontrol, and environmental remediation have been focused on in this review. The potential development and implementation challenges are also explored.

Water scarcity due to contamination of water resources with different inorganic and organic contaminants is one of the foremost global concerns. It is due to rapid industrialization, fast urbanization, and the low efficiency of traditional wastewater treatment strategies. Conventional water treatment strategies, including chemical precipitation, membrane filtration, coagulation, ion exchange, solvent extraction, adsorption, and photolysis, are based on adopting various nanomaterials (NMs) with a high surface area, including carbon NMs, polymers, metals-based, and metal oxides. However, significant bottlenecks are toxicity, cost, secondary contamination, size and space constraints, energy efficiency, prolonged time consumption, output efficiency, and scalability. On the contrary, green NMs fabricated using microorganisms emerge as cost-effective, eco-friendly, sustainable, safe, and efficient substitutes for these traditional strategies. This review summarizes the state-of-the-art microbial-assisted green NMs and strategies including microbial cells, magnetotactic bacteria (MTB), bio-augmentation and integrated bioreactors for removing an extensive range of water contaminants addressing the challenges associated with traditional strategies. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the efficacies of microbe-assisted green NM-based water remediation strategy with the traditional practices in light of crucial factors like reusability, regeneration, removal efficiency, and adsorption capacity has been presented. The associated challenges, their alternate solutions, and the cutting-edge prospects of microbial-assisted green nanobiotechnology with the integration of advanced tools including internet-of-nano-things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence have been discussed. This review opens a new window to assist future research dedicated to sustainable and green nanobiotechnology-based strategies for environmental remediation applications.

The global outgoing outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in different regions of Sudan, Uganda, and Western Africa have brought into focus the inadequacies and restrictions of pre-designed vaccines for use in the battle against EVD, which has affirmed the urgent need for the development of a systematic protocol to produce Ebola vaccines prior to an outbreak. There are several vaccines available being developed by preclinical trials and human-based clinical trials. The group of vaccines includes virus-like particle-based vaccines, DNA-based vaccines, whole virus recombinant vaccines, incompetent replication originated vaccines, and competent replication vaccines. The limitations and challenges faced in the development of Ebola vaccines are the selection of immunogenic, rapid-responsive, cross-protective immunity-based vaccinations with assurances of prolonged protection. Another issue for the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines involves post authorization, licensing, and surveillance to ensure a vaccine’s efficacy towards combating the Ebola outbreak. The current review focuses on the development process, the current perspective on the development of an Ebola vaccine, and future challenges for combatting future emerging Ebola infectious disease.