Clinical Microbiology: Open Access

Microbial conversion of sugarcane juice to valuable biopolymers

3^rd Global Microbiologists Annual Meeting

August 15-17, 2016 Portland, Oregon, USA

Ing-Lung Shih, Fang-Chen Wu and Wei-Sor Lee

Dayeh University, Taiwan

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Clin Microbiol

Abstract:

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the feasibility of a tandem production of two invaluable biopolymers-levan and poly-�µ-lysine (�µ-PL) by microbial fermentation using sugarcane juice as a feedstock. The results showed that sugarcane juice can served as a good substrate for levan production by Bacillus subtilis strain natto. A high yield of levan production (22 g/L at 24 h; 22 g/L/d; 33.3% by sucrose consumption) was obtained when the bacteria were cultured in medium containing sugarcane juice (containing 78 g/L of sucrose) at pH 6.5, temperature 37 oC and agitation speed 175 rpm. The fermentation broth was concentrated by ultra filtration through a membrane of 5 kDa cutoff. The concentrate was harvested of levan by precipitation by addition of 4 vols. cold ethanol; the filtrate containing glucose was proven to be a suitable medium for �µ-PL production by Streptomyces albulus when it was supplemented with yeast extract, (NH4)2SO4 and basal salts. 4.4 g/L of �µ-PL accumulation was obtained in 72 h using two-stage fermentation with control of pH. Biorefinery of biomass into biopolymer is a sustainable process that not only solves environmental problems but also produced high value added bio-products; it is a green process that is worth of developing.

Biography :

Ing-Lung Shih has obtained his PhD degree in Organic Chemistry from Brandies University of USA in 1987. He had a joint Postdoctoral appointment by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and New England Deaconess Hospital (NEDH) from 1987 to 1989. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at Dayeh University of Taiwan. His research areas include chemical synthesis, enzymatic synthesis and microbial synthesis of bioactive materials (peptides, proteins, biopolymers, enzymes and antibiotics) for the applications in food, medicine, cosmetics and environment. He has published 62 journal papers (47 SCI papers), 69 conference papers, 29 technical reports, 2 book and 14 Patents.

Email: ils@mail.dyu.edu.tw