Commercial products and biotechnology

Question 1

What is industrial microbiology?

Answer 1

The use of microorganisms grown on a large scale to produce products i.e vaccines or antibiotics

Question 2

List 5 properties of a useful industrial microbe

Answer 2

Can be easily innoculated
Grows quick on cheap medium
Produces the wanted product quickly
Non pathogenic
Be able to be genetically manipulated

Question 3

Discuss the difference between primary and secondary metabolites, and give an
example of each.

Answer 3

Primary metabolites are produced during the exponential phase and they produce alcohol
Secondary is produced during the stationary phase, it is more complex, not needed for growth and formation depends on growth conditions. They produce antibiotics

Question 4

List important parts of a fermentor and describe what they do

Answer 4

Impellers and spargers: Generate O2 bubbles
cooling jacket and coiled pipes: cool fermentor and media
steriliser valve: to sterilise media

Question 5

What is scale up and describe two problems with it

Answer 5

The transfer of a small lab scale to a larger scale
biochem engineer needs to understand the fermentor
Problems arise from aeration and mixing

Question 6

What method is used to test for new microbial isolates and describe it

Answer 6

Cross streak method
1) antibiotic producer streaked across plate
2) incubate to permit growth and antibiotic production
3) cross streaked with test organisms and incubated to allow organisms to grow

Question 7

Describe what an exoenzyme is

Answer 7

Enzymes that are excreted into the medium instead of being held in the cell
Extracellular
Can ingest insoluble polymers
Released in greater amounts than internal enzymes

Question 8

List 3 ways to immobilise an enzyme

Answer 8

Bonding of enzyme to a carrier
Cross linking of enzyme molecules
Enzyme inclusion

Question 9

List the steps of gene cloning

Answer 9

Isolation and fragmentation
Insertion of DNA fragment into cloning vector
Introduction of cloned DNA into host organism

Question 10

Define Vector vaccine

Answer 10

Vaccine made from inserting genes from a pathogenic virus into a harmless carrier virus

Question 11

Subunit vaccine definition

Answer 11

Contain only a specific protein or proteins from a pathogenic organism

Question 12

DNA vaccine definition

Answer 12

Uses DNA of a pathogen to cause an immune response

Question 13

How is gene mining done

Answer 13

DNA is isolated from the environment and cloned into appropriate expression vectors and the library is screened for activities of interest

Question 14

List 3 uses for transgenic animals

Answer 14

Producing human proteins that need specific modifications
Medical research
Improving livestock and other food animals for human consumption

Question 15

List three methods by which fungi can asexually reproduce.

Answer 15

Asexual production of spores
Growth and spread of hyphae
simple cell division

Question 16

List three problems that might arise when trying to express a mammalian protein in a
bacterial host.

Answer 16

Degradation,
Toxicity to host ,
Formation of inclusion bodies