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CHAPTER XIX: INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY
REVISION DATE:
GLOSSARIES
MICROBIOLOGY | GENETICS | MEDICAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Food Made by Microbial Activities
o Cheese Manufacturing
o Ethanol Fermentation
o Bread Making
o Other Fermented Foods
o Silage
o Microbes As Foods
• Non-Food Commercial Microbiology
o Industrial Microbiology
o General Industrial Processes
o Pharmacological Industry
Products Produced by Molecular Biological Processes
o Bioremediation
In the first part of this chapter the industrial production of several common
foods will be described. In the second section other industrial uses of microbes
will be presented.
CHEESE PRODUCTION
The discovery of the cheese-making process is very old and certainly was
accidental. Early man learned to carry his water, beer and milk in natural
containers like animal stomachs, bladders and lengths of intestines tied at the
ends. These were tough, water-proof and light, and they could easily be tied
around ones neck, shoulder or waist. The stomach of young cattle contains an
enzyme, rennin, that cleaves the casein protein of milk making it easier to
curdle when microbes convert the lactose sugar in milk to acid; This is the
basis of cheese making. A likely scenario is that a calf's stomach, full of milk,
was left in a cool corner of a cave or hut for several weeks during which time
the milked curdled, the liquid evaporated and microbes contaminating the milk
grew. The molds and/or bacteria that grew on and in the curd as it continued to
dry produced a unique flavor. When the owners finally returned they found a
furry chunk of what once had been milk and being hungry (REALLY
SERIOUSLY HUNGRY) they gave it a try and found out that it didn't taste
too bad. This experience probably happened numerous times given our
ancestors propensity to carry milk & other liquids in the stomachs of dead
animals. People quickly realized that the semidried curd (the precipitated milk
protein) was lighter to tote around than the milk and that it lasted a relatively
long time before it spoiled so badly you couldn't stand to eat it. Finally
someone came up with the idea of making it happen on purpose and the cheese
industry was born. The process of cheese manufacturing today follows these
original steps:
• Milk from any mammal (e.g. cow, horse, camel, whale, guinea pig,
human [Sold under the brand name of MOTHER'S-MILK CHEESE]
etc.) is mixed with RENNIN or a similar enzyme harvested
commercially from a mold. The enzyme splits the milk protein (casein).
• A STARTER CULTURE of a known strain of bacteria that produces
desired flavors is added and the lactose sugar is fermented by the
bacteria to acids, and other flavoring products, which lower the pH to a
point where the cleaved casein precipitates out as a CURD.
• The excess liquid, called WHEY is drained away, sometimes under
pressure and the semi-dried curd collected.
o The whey, which use to be a waste product, is currently added to
many foods because it is rich in proteins, vitamins and other cool
nutrients.
• The curd is inoculated with SPECIAL BACTERIA (another "starter
culture") and/or MOLDS or BOTH that are known to give a particular
flavor to the cheese as they grow on the curd. An ARTIFICIAL
inoculum of laboratory microbes is used today for many cheeses, but
most cheeses around the world are NATURALLY inoculated by placing
them in environments where the air is known to contain microbes that
produce a desired cheese. Sometimes additional ingredients like salt and
herbs are added to achieve a desired flavor in the product.
• The curd is RIPENED for various periods of time under specific
conditions of temperature and humidity, often in caves where these
environmental factors stay constant. During ripening the final flavors
and consistencies of the cheeses are produced by the action of the
various microbes growing in and on the cheese, as well as by abiotic
chemical reactions.
• At the end of the incubation period the cheese is harvested packaged and
sold.
FAQ: Why are there so many different flavors of cheese when the process is
basically the same for all cheeses?
How many of you like blue cheese (I'm mad for it)? Do you know what the
crunchy blue things are in that cheese?
ALCOHOL FERMENTATION
Intentional alcohol production by humans is known to have been around for at
least 10,000 years. It is not illogical to imagine that it is even older than that;
probably coinciding with man's use of containers to carry around liquids
described above. Like modern man, our ancestors relished honey and certainly
raided wild bee hives for the sweet nectar they contained. Because of the liquid
nature of honey early humans undoubtedly placed the honey in whatever
containers they could use; i.e., animal stomachs, bladders etc. as described
above. After a successful raid on a hive our ancestors must have, like Winnie-
the-Poo, sat around the fire and enjoyed dipping their fingers in the "honey
pot". Certainly they quickly discovered that by adding some water to the
container they could make a sweet drink and certainly an occasional bag of
honey-drink was left unattended for a period of time sufficient to allow
fermentation to occur. Once the people returned and drank the now
"modified" contents, the rest, as they say, "is history" (maybe the first "kegger"
was really a "stomacher". So it is highly possible that the first alcoholic drink
was mead (beer made from the sugar in honey).
The other thing that I believe, which was stated in the paragraph, is
ethanol would be considered an illegal drug if it was not present in
almost every culture around the world. My comparison to this is the
drug marijuana. States around the country are trying to pass laws
that would let it be used for medical uses only. Here is a drug that
has a medical purpose, while ethanol has no medical purpose at all.
The fact is ethanol takes more lives in one day compared to
marijuana’s death toll for a whole entire year.
There is nothing like the feeling when your on vacation and you get
a phone call. On the other end of the line is a sobbing mother. You
know something tragic has happened and then she tells you. One of
your best friends has died from drinking and driving. People make
stupid choices all of the time, and getting behind the wheel of a car
when you are drinking is probably the stupidest choice ever.
Light brews are generally made with yeast strains that convert more of the
available sugars to ethanol, thus lowering the total caloric content of the beer.
Since you have made beer as a lab exercise you will see how this is done. In
wine making the same basic process occurs only the source of the
carbohydrates is grapes or some other carbohydrate-containing plant other than
grain (e.g. blackberries, elderberries, dandelions etc.), malting is not required
because grapes etc. contain only short sugar polymers that the yeast can
ferment directly. The predominant flavor of the wine is the result of chemicals
present in the grapes at the instant of harvest and that are produced during
aging. Wine can be made from any fruit that has sufficient carbohydrates
present to be converted into enough ethanol.
Distilled ethanol products are made from the fermentation of other grains like
corn and rye. At the end of the fermentation the material is boiled and the more
volatile ethanol, which evaporates first, is collected in a concentrated form. The
combination of the unique starting material, the yeast strains and the aging
process all contribute to the unique flavors of distilled spirits.
BREADS
Bread is another ancient product of microbial action that was certainly
discovered by accident. Ancient man (in this case almost surely WOMEN)
began to gather seeds for food, probably after seeing other animals eat them.
However, dried seeds are hard to chew and if they're not broken open pass
through the intestine without yielding any nutritional value (if you dare, remind
me to tell you an awful story illustrating this). It was not difficult to recognize
that breaking up the seeds with a stone yielded a more palatable food that
digested easier and from there it was a small jump to mixing it with water to
form the crushed material into a compact unit that was easy to mold, to carry
and to eat (remember they didn't have spoons to scoop up loose food). As these
wet masses of crushed grain were placed near the fire to dry out, many of them
baked. During the baking the grain developed a pleasing flavor and some of
the wads of dough swelled up and became "bread" during the baking. The
texture of the "bread" was clearly desirable, plus the tough crust made it easy to
handle, preserve and transport, so women experimented (the first "scientists"?)
until they could reproduce this effect and over the years bread making
developed into the process we know today.
This author and ~1 million other Americans suffer from a gluten induced
inherited disease called CELIAC SPRUE. Those of us with this genetic
condition become quite ill if we eat gluten containing foods, so we must avoid
all wheat breads, pizzas, pastas, pies, cakes etc. So the next time you see
someone carefully reading the label on a can in the supermarket, they may not
be a health-food enthusiast, but just one of us sprue-victims making sure there
is no GLUTEN lurking in that container. Don't feel too sorry for us, as we have
the perfect excuse for eating a LOT of Mexican food (OLE!!).
SILAGE
A lot of the beef you eat and the milk you drink is produced from cows that are
fed on a rich diet of fermented grass, chopped corn and other seed crops. When
these plant products are placed in pits or closed containers which maintain
ANAEROBIC conditions, #microbes convert much of the complex
carbohydrate, to lactic and other organic acids that are easily metabolized by
the cattle and the microbes in the cow stomachs. These nutrients make them
grow faster or produce more milk, so they can meet you on the hamburger bun
or the "Got Milk" commercial.
MICROBES AS FOOD
This is one of these things that keeps popping up in, that I call "stupid science".
The logic goes something like this:
"Hey! I've got a fantastic, sooo cool idea; here's these microbe things that
grow like gangbusters on inexpensive waste products that we're just throwing
away anyway; well why not grow these little micro
"steaks" on garbage, press the little buggers into Now here is a true story
cakes or shape them into steaks, or whatever and sell (I swear):
it to people as the latest food fad and make oodles of It seems that once
money?". upon-a-time a company
was actually formed to
Sorry, but it doesn't work out that way. First, most use oil to grow oil-
microbes taste so bad or are full of such toxic material eating yeasts as food to
that you wouldn't want them in the same county, much feed the ever-growing
less in your lunch. Secondly, the "waste material" hungry horde of
you're going to grow them on is either toxic or tastes humans. Which is the
terrible itself and besides you have to sterilize millions equivalent of using
of tons of it before you can use it as microbial media, new, fully operational
which takes buckets of money, an autoclave the size of BMWs as flowerpots.
New York City and the waste heat alone would melt Guess the outcome of
the Polar ice caps. Thirdly, by the time you've treated this enterprise?
them so they're palatable, you will have doubled the
national debt. By now you've gotten the idea that the once "cool idea" isn't very
workable.
However, there are a few microbe-foods that almost make using microbes for
food look reasonable. These are mushrooms, molds in cheese, soy and tempeh,
algae and yeasts. Some lakes in Africa naturally grow huge quantities of an
eatable algae. There are tons of yeast produced as byproducts of the ethanol
industry, but eating yeast in anything but small, flavoring quantities is like
doing the same with vanilla (dare you to try that). Sadly the people who eat the
algae are so bad off nutritionally that........well the fact that they eat the algae
says it all; you can find these algae in your local health-food store if you are
interested (ask for Spirulina).
Simple organic chemicals like ethanol, acetic acid (vinegar) acetone, butyric
acid and lactic acid are readily made either by organic chemical synthesis or by
microbial fermentation. The method of choice depends upon the price of the
raw materials and on the availability of industrial facilities to carry out either
process. That is, in some cases it is cheaper to manufacture ethanol by
fermentation and in other cases by chemical conversion from petroleum or
natural gas. Immediately proceeding the first world war the process of acetone-
butanol fermentation by bacteria was discovered. When the war began England
found itself cut off from a supply of acetone (at this site go to "search", type in
acetone & follow the steps until you reach the pathway), a crucial ingredient in
the making of gunpowder. Chaim Weismann, a Jewish biochemist was put in
charge of developing the microbial process for the commercial production of
acetone. His success made such an important contribution to the war effort that
the British government offered him ANY REWARD he chose. Being an ardent
Zionist, he asked that the British support the formation of a Jewish State in
Palestine. Weismann subsequently made substantial contributions in the US to
the production of synthetic rubber during the second world war which earned
him the gratitude of the American government. When Israel, with the strong
support of the US and British governments, became a nation after the second
world war Wiesmann served as its first president.
Today acetone and butanol are more cheaply made from petroleum, but as
these natural resources run low in the next century we may have to return to the
microbiological technology. The following is a partial list of organic chemicals
made commercially by microbes:
Propylene glycol (PG) is widely used in the drug industry to help manufacture
drugs and preserve the moisture of foods. PG is manufactured from
propylene, which is a nonrenewable resource originating from petroleum.
Researchers enlisted the bacterium Escherichia coli to produce PG from
glucose. They did so by engineering the bacteria to overproduce two enzymes
that help the bacterium grow in the absence of oxygen.
PHARMACOLOGICAL INDUSTRY
1. Vitamins
2. Amino acids
3. Nucleic acids
4. Antibiotics
5. Alkaloids
6. Steroids
7. Non-Steroid Hormones/cell regulators (cytokines):
A. Epidermal growth factor
B. Proinsulin
C. Insulin
D. Human growth hormone
E. Somatostatin
F. Interferons
G. Platelet-derived growth factor
H. Fibroblast growth factor
I. Tumor Necrosis Factor
J. Other cytokines are coming on line all the time
8. Blood coagulating factor XIII
9. #Transgenic plants and animals
10. The #restriction enzymes
11. #Plasmids
12.Other enzymes (e.g. ligase, DNA polymerases etc.) used in molecular
biological research
Biotech industries, which produce the biological materials listed above from
genetically engineered microbes, plants or animals have developed rapidly in
the last few years. Most of these industries, some of which are worth millions
of dollars, did not exist 15 years ago and new biotech industries are appearing
all the time as scientist find how to produce new biological products using
genetically engineered microbes.
BIOREMEDIATION
BIOREMEDIATION IS DEFINED AS THE USE OF MICROBES TO
REMOVE POLLUTANTS FROM THE ENVIRONMENT.
1. Benzene
2. Phenol
3. Chloroform
4. Carbon tetrachloride
5. Gasoline
6. Motor oils
7. Raw petroleum
8. Nitrate
9. Lead
10. DDT
In many cases the soil and ground water leaching from industrial and municipal
toxic waste dumps contaminate vast quantities of ground water, making it
dangerous for any subsequent use of that grand water. The idea behind
BIOREMEDIATION is to (1) isolate microbes that can DEGRADE or eat a
particular pollutant and (2) to provide the conditions whereby it can do this
most effectively, thereby eliminating that pollutant. The technology for doing
this is still in the development stage, but companies have been formed which
provide this service. The problems however are IMMENSE.
The basic principle of bioremediation is the same as that for #sewage treatment;
That is, the use of microbial metabolism to "eat up" or metabolize pollutants so
as to convert them into something harmless. The following general steps are
utilized in bioremediation:
Define the pollution situation: What pollutants are present, how much of
each are there, how dangerous are they, are they spreading and, if so, where and
how fast.
Bioremediation Information:
http://www.mannlib.cornell.edu:10000/ccr2/Horror/Biof.tutorial.HTML ;
Biofilms
Copyright © Dr. R. E. Hurlbert, 1999.
This material may be used for educational purposes only and may not be duplicated for
commercial purposes.
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