Lecture 2 Flashcards
What are the 5 major groups of microbes exploited in industrial microbiology, and if specified what are they used to produce?
Actinomycetes - antibiotics and amino acids
Cyanobacteria - potential renewable food stuffs in future
Proteobacteria
Fungal yeasts
Filamentous fungi
What 4 possible products from microbes do we use?
MIcrobial cells (broken up or whole) Products from cells: Enzymes Primary metabolic products 2ndry metabolic products
Examples of specific products from cells because I know how much you love your examples
enzymes - glucose isomerase Antibiotics - penicillen food additives - amino acids alcohol - ethanol chemicals - citric acid
Name 4 uses of microbial cells as a whole, give details where poss
food stuffs (Quorn)
Whole cell biotransformation - ‘cell factories’ (often living but not growing cells)
Why good: work at low temps, few side products, normally specific, grown in aqueous rather than organic solvents. If whole metabolic pathways are undisturbed.
Removing nuclear waste - resting cells of Desulfovibrio desulfricans precipitate 99Tc (waste product of nuclear fuel cycle with long half life) and immobilise it
Steriod production and purification - Rhizopus Arrhizus and Curvularia Lunata covert basic (cheap steroid) to cortisol
What are the 2 ways to get enzymes from microbes?
Direct extraction
expressed as recombinant protein
Main benefits of enzymes
specificity
efficiency under optimum conditions
producing them, is very rapid
growth conditions and materials inexpensive
Define bulk enzyme
partially purified
Give 2 examples of them and their uses
Detergenets - proteases and lipases
clothe colour improvement - cellulases (strips off outer layer)
Sweet making - Intvertases
What’s the other type of enzyme used, other than bulk
purified recombinant enzyme
Examples of recombination purified enzymes and uses
Restriction endonucleases - used to make other enzymes and proteins
Glucose oxidase - test blood sugar - diagnostics
cholesterol esterase - monitoring cholesterol levels - diagnostics
When are primary metabolites made?
majority of the time in the cell’s life cycle
4 most important primary metabolites
purine nucleotides
vitamins
organic acids
amino acids
Main use of amino acids and the 3 main required
food additives
Glutamate, lysine, tryptophan
What is primarily used for making aa’s
gram +ve bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum
Why must 2ndry metabs be grown in particular ways or genetically engineered?
only produced at particular time in cell life, often in periods of stress
What is the main example of a biopolymer and it’s use in the EU
bacterial exopollysaccharide xanthan gum - a thickner
What’s exg made by?
Xanthomonas sp. and X. campestris (in lab) as a defense mechanism
properties of exg
soluble in hot or cold water, high viscosity at low concs, secreted (-therefore extraction theoretically easy but actually very viscous so tricky)
What did Fleming originally observe to discover penecillin
Penecillium notatum killed Staph. a.
How did scientists get around the problem of low yield produced by P. notatum
Discovered P. chrysogenum
Where were more antibiotics discovered and of those that they make what’s the most well known AB called?
soil bacteria collectively called Actinomycetes.
Streptomycin
How are new antibiotics being discovered and made?
- metagenomics used to find novel clusters of genes for antibiotic synthesis. These are then expressed in a heterologous host and screen for new antibiotics.
- use gene shuffling to biologically modify ab
How are antibiotics made currently?
fermentation for natural and semi synthetic abs.
