Module 8 - Microbial Biotechnology

Question 1

What term describes the use of biological processes or organisms for the production of goods?

Answer 1

Biotechnology

Question 2

What are potential byproducts of microbial synthesis?

Answer 2

Food additives, solvents, enzymes, biofuels, agrochemicals, whole cells, fine chemicals

Question 3

What are desirable products harvested from biotechnology?

Answer 3

Enzymes with a desired catalytic activity, or the degradation of an environmental contaminant

Question 4

Obtaining microbes with characteristics that are useful or critical for specific biotechnology applications is defined as?

Answer 4

Bioprospecting

Question 5

Any industrial process involving the culture of microorganisms, either aerobic or anaerobic, for the production of desired substances is termed?

Answer 5

Fermentation

Question 6

Where do industrial fermentations take place?

Answer 6

Large-culture vessels called bioreactors

Question 7

What do bioreactors maximize and yield?

Answer 7

Maximize cell density; yield product

Question 8

What is controlled during the process of fermentation?

Answer 8

Environmental conditions

- Nutrients, oxygen, pH, and temperature

Question 9

What are the two basic designs of bioreactors?

Answer 9

• Fed batch reactor

- Chemostat

Question 10

Which bioreactor supports very high cell densities by providing the culture with a growth-limiting nutrient, such as a carbon source, over time?

Answer 10

Fed-batch reactor

Question 11

Which process (Fed-batch or chemostat) controls the growth rate and can prevent the production of non-desired side products?

Answer 11

Fed-batch reactor

Question 12

Which bioreactor is continuous and as an equivalent amount of culture is removed, a new medium is added?

Answer 12

Chemostat

Question 13

What does a continuous addition of fresh medium control in a chemostat?

Answer 13

Growth rate and physiological steady state

Question 14

What are the 4 phases of a growth curve?

Answer 14

• Lag phase
• Exponential phase
• Stationary phase
• Death phase

Question 15

What two factors are varied and produced depending on the particular growth phase of a cell?

Answer 15

• Metabolic pathways

- Metabolites produced

Question 16

How are two ways that beneficial genetic alterations (mutations) are generated in microbes?

Answer 16

• Random

- Site-directed

Question 17

Exposure of cells to X-rays, or DNA-damaging chemicals that cause mutations in the DNA of a cell is known as which type of mutagenesis?

Answer 17

Random

Question 18

When is random mutagenesis appropriate?

Answer 18

When a researcher may not know all the cellular processes that impact the phenotype they desire to affect

Question 19

Example of random mutagenesis?

Answer 19

Penicillin production

Question 20

Which type of mutagenesis allows researchers to make specific mutations at specific known sites with a DNA molecule?

Answer 20

Site-directed

Question 21

Methods to modify genomes directly is a process called?

Answer 21

Genome editing

Question 22

Two types of site-directed mutagenesis?

Answer 22

• PCR

- Oligonucleotide

Question 23

Why would one need to do site-directed mutagenesis?

Answer 23

To study changes in protein activity that occur as a result of the DNA manipulation

Question 24

What are specifically designed to produce recombinant proteins?

Answer 24

Expression vectors

Question 25

Constructing novel biological systems from constituent parts is known as?

Answer 25

Synthetic biology

Question 26

What are the steps to creating a synthetic organism?

Answer 26

• Entire microbial genome is synthesized
• Introduced into a cell
• Replicate
• Replaced into the preexisting host DNA

Question 27

What constitutes a large portion of red biotech products that also constitute a substantial part of the pharmaceutical industry?

Answer 27

• Secondary metabolites

- Human proteins

Question 28

Examples of red biotech therapeutics

Answer 28

• Type I interferons that treats for antitumor and antiviral properties
• Blood coagulation factor XIIIa that treats hemophilia
• Epidermal growth factor that treats burns and organ damage

Question 29

The conversion of biomass, living or recently living biological substance into a number of products including chemicals, energy, and materials

Answer 29

Biorefinery

Question 30

Fuels produced via biomass conversion is called?

Answer 30

Biofuels

Question 31

Example of a biofuels

Answer 31

Ethanol

Question 32

How is biofuel created?

Answer 32

In an ethanol still, heat is used to evaporate the ethanol from the fermented solution, which is then condensed around cooling coils and collected

Question 33

What material is resistant to biodegradation and has detrimental effects on wildlife and ecosystems?

Answer 33

Bioplastics

Question 34

What are factors that produce biofactors?

Answer 34

• Sun

- Transgenic plants: contain DNA from another type of organism

Question 35

Term for a natural polyester?

Answer 35

PHB

Question 36

Term for an assortment of polyesters?

Answer 36

PHAs

Question 37

Short chain-length PHAs are made up of?

Answer 37

Carbon monomers with 3 to 5 carbon atoms

Question 38

How do you achieve high levels of PHA?

Answer 38

Supply limiting amounts of nutrients such as phosphorus or nitrogen and simultaneously providing ample amounts carbon

Question 39

Enzymes that originate from microbes are referred to as?

Answer 39

Biocatalysts

Question 40

Why is vitamin and amino acid synthesis important?

Answer 40

These products have many uses in food, animal feed, and nutritional supplement industries

Question 41

What is considered nature’s genetic engineer?

Answer 41

Agrobacterium

Question 42

What is Agrobacterium required for the initiation of?

Answer 42

Tumors in dicot plants

Question 43

What is the plasmid responsible for tumor formation?

Answer 43

pTi

- Tumor-inducing plasmid