Biorecovery is emerging as a promising process to retrieve gold from secondary resources. The present study aimed to explore the uptake pattern of Pycnoporus sanguineus biomass for gold, identify the effective functional groups in gold recovery process, and thus further intensify the process via microbial surface modification. Results showed that P. sanguineus biomass could effectively recover gold with the formation of highly crystal AuNPs without any exogeneous electron donor. Under the conditions of various initial gold concentrations (1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 mM), biomass dosage of 2.0 g/L, solution pH value of 4.0, and incubation temperature of 30 degrees C, the uptake equilibrium established after 4, 8, and 12 h, respectively. The uptake process could be well described by pseudo-second order kinetics model (R-2 = 0.9988) and Langmuir isotherm model (R-2 = 0.9958). The maximum uptake capacity of P. sanguineus reached as high as 358.69 mg/g. Further analysis indicated that amino, carboxyl and hydroxyl groups positively contributed to the uptake process. Among them, amino group significantly favored the uptake of gold during recovery process. When P. sanguineus biomass was modified by introduction of amino group, the gold uptake process was successfully intensified by shortening the uptake period and enhancing the uptake capacity. (C) 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers