Microbial Biotechnology

Question 0

What amino acids are used in the food industry?

Answer 0

Lysine and glutamic acid

Question 1

What are the four main industry’s microbial products are included in?

Answer 1

Industrial and agricultural products
Food additives
Products for human and animal health (antibiotics and medicines)
Biofuels

Question 2

How are the two amino acids produced?

Answer 2

Produced using regulatory mutants, which have reduced ability to limit synthesis of an end product

Question 3

What are organic acids commonly used for?

Answer 3

For preservatives

Question 4

What are biopolymers used for? And give an example

Answer 4

Used to modify flow chacteristics of liquids and to serve as gelling agents. For example lactic acid bacteria produce dextrans

Question 5

What are biosurfactants and what are they used for?

Answer 5

They’re amphiphilic molecules. Used for emulsification, increasing detergency, wetting and phase dispersion, and solubilization.

Question 6

How is bioethanol produced?

Answer 6

Produced from degradation of plant starches in corn by amylases and amyloglucosidases, followed by microbial fermentation of remaining sugars

Question 7

What is are the negatives of using bioethanol?

Answer 7

Drives up production of food prices
During production it absorbs water and can’t be shipped through existing pipelines.
It has less energy in it’s bonds than other molecules, including petrol and butanol.
It may take more energy input to produce.

Question 8

The positives of using hydrogen gas?

Answer 8

It has 3x more potential energy per unit weight than gasoline, making it the highest energy content fuel availability.

Question 9

What are the negatives of using hydrogen gas?

Answer 9

Storage and distribution problems.

It can’t e mixed with gasoline (unlike bioethanol) to reduce petroleum use

Question 10

How could hydrogen gas be produced?

Answer 10

Hydrogen gas can be produced as a direct product of microbial fermentation.
Oxygenic photosyntetic and anoxygenc photoheterotrophs also produce hydrogen gas.
Hydrogenase and nitrogenase enzymes both produce hydrogen gas.

Question 11

How do microbes grow?

Answer 11

They photosynthesis to make ATP and organic food molecules provide carbon for biomass. Nitrogen is also fixed to ammonium while releasing hydrogen gas. This produces new cell material.

Question 12

What must be controlled when growing microbes?

Answer 12

Agitation, temperature, pH changes and oxygenation

Question 13

How do stirred fermenters work?

Answer 13

Continual addition of a critical nutrient so that microbes will not have excess substrate available at any given time. Prevents production and accumulation of undesirable metabolic waste products

Question 14

What are primary metabolites related to and give an example of some

Answer 14

Related to synthesis of microbial cells in growth phase. Include amino acids, nucleotides, fermentation end products and enzymes

Question 15

What are secondary metabolites?

Answer 15

Accumulate following active growth. Have no direct relationship to synthesis of cell material and natural growth. Include antibiotics and mycotoxins

Question 16

What is genetic manipulation used to produce and what are the classical method of doing it?

Answer 16

Used to produce microorganisms with new and desirable chacteristics. Classical methods of genetic exchange coupled with recombinant DNA technology, genomics and systems biology play a vital role in industrial microbiology

Question 17

What are production strains?

Answer 17

Microbial strain currently used to generate the product of interest.

Question 18

How can mutation occur when using product strains?

Answer 18

Chemical exposure
Ultraviolet light
Transposon mutagenesis

Question 19

What are the benefits of protoplast fusion?

Answer 19

Promotes genetic variability in microbes and plant cells.
Can fuse protoplasts of different spevies to produce new strains.
Process is currently mutagenic and promotes recombination.

Question 20

What are the benefits of in vitro techniques for targeted strain construction?

Answer 20

may yield novel products, novel gene regulation, novel post translational modification of proteins

Question 21

What is heterologous gene expression?

Answer 21

Functional genes cloned into different species so the production of specific products without contamination of other substances

Question 22

What are the benefits of modifying gene expression?

Answer 22

Product yield may be increased by modification of gene reguoatory molecules.
Allows for overproduction of a product.
Antibiotics can be produced in this way

Question 23

What is direct evolution?

Answer 23

Creates new metabolic capabilities in a given microorganism for gene of interest.

Question 24

What did systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment produce?

Answer 24

Aptamers which is when RNA is used as a ligand with biological activity to alter specific activity of cellular targets due to tight fitting in target moecule

Question 25

What are metagenomics and bioprospecting used for?

Answer 25

Used for the study of genetic diversity in microbes in nature that can’t be cultured.
Exploring nature for new and potentially useful microbes and products by genomics

Question 26

What are biopesticides?

Answer 26

Biological agents such as bacteria, fungi or viruses which can be used to kill a susceptible insect

Question 27

Give an example to explain agricultural biotechnology

Answer 27

Use of agrobacterium tumefacians.
Tumor inducing (Ti) plasmid is transferred into plant cells genomes causing cancer. Now Ti is used as a vector for insertion of genes of interest for modification of crop plants.

Question 28

What are biosensors?

Answer 28

Living microbes, enzymes or organelles are linked to electrodes to detect specific substances.