Daily Newsletter April 10, 2012
Today's Topic: Industrial Fermentation
Reading:
- Fermentation Technology Abstract
- This abstract, written by Enzymm: Project Consulting for Life Sciences, is an excellent primer for industrial fermentation. The PDF is 15 pages, but over all the text is rather short. You will see references to topics we discussed in bacterial growth.
Industrial fermentation's origin can be found in fermented food. Cheese making, vinting (wine making), brewing (beer making), and even making kimchi or sauerkraut are accomplished through fermentation.
As microbiologists, you have two uses of the word fermentation.
1) Fermentation defined as a form of anaerobic respiration in which pyruvate is reduced to an end product such as ethanol or lactic acid.
2) The growth of large numbers of bacterial or fungal (yeast) cells in order to produce a useful product (enzymes, vitamins, antibiotics, or whole cells).
- This second definition came from the growth of yeasts to high concentration in order to produce ethanol as an end product (beer, liquor, wine). In modern uses, the end product of pyruvate reduction is not the only valuable end product. In industrial fermentation, you don't even have to have anaerobic metabolic pathways; the cells could be using oxygen for aerobic respiration. The goal though is to get a useful product out of the microbial growth.
Daily Challenge: Your take on fermentation
Using the above reading, your textbook, and any references you find, discuss the idea of industrial fermentation. First give a general overview of what is meant by industrial overview. Look for some topic that interests you, something that you would like to know more about. Write a quick paragraph about it. Industrial fermentation is a broad topic, and one in which whole classes are devoted, so just look for some aspect that interests you.
