Biotechnology and

Industrial Microbiology
 NATURE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY AND
INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY
 One of the broadest definition of Biotechnology is
the one given at the United Nations Conference on
Biological Diversity in 1992 as “any technological
application that uses biological systems, living
organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or
modify products or processes for specific use.”
 Some of these include the use of microorganisms
to make the antibiotic, penicillin or the dairy
product, yoghurt; the use of microorganisms to
produce amino acids or enzymes are also examples
of biotechnology.
 Industrial microbiology may be defined as the
study of the large-scale and profit-motivated
production of microorganisms or their products for
direct use, or as inputs in the manufacture of other
goods.
 Thus yeasts may be produced for direct
consumption as food for humans or as animal feed,
or for use in bread-making; their product, ethanol,
may also be consumed in the form of alcoholic
beverages, or used in the manufacture of
perfumes, pharmaceuticals, etc.
 Industrial microbiology is clearly a branch of
biotechnology and includes the traditional and
nucleic acid aspects.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF INDUSTRIAL
MICROBIOLOGY
 The discipline of microbiology is often divided into sub-
disciplines such as medical microbiology, environmental
microbiology, food microbiology and industrial
microbiology.
 The characteristics of industrial microbiology can be
highlighted by comparing its features with those of another
sub-division of microbiology, medical microbiology.
 Industrial vs Medical Microbiology
 They differ in at least three different ways:
First is the immediate motivation:
 In industrial microbiology the immediate motivation is
profit and the generation of wealth.
 In medical microbiology, the immediate concern is to
offer expert opinion to the doctor about, for example
the spectrum of antibiotic susceptibility of the
microorganisms isolated from a diseased condition so
as to restore the patient back to good health.
 The generation of wealth is of course at the back of the
mind of the medical microbiologist.
The second difference is:
 That the microorganisms per se used in routine medical
microbiology have little or no direct economic value, outside
the contribution which they make to ensuring the return to
good health of the patient who may then pay for the
services.
 In industrial microbiology the microorganisms involved or
their products are very valuable.
The third difference is the scale at which the microorganisms
are handled.
 In industrial microbiology, the scale is large and the
organisms may be cultivated in fermentors as large as
50,000 liters or larger.
 In routine medical microbiology the scale at which the
pathogen is handled is limited to a loopful or a few
milliliters.
 If a pathogen which normally would have no economic
value were to be handled on the large scale used in
industrial microbiology, it would most probably be to
prepare a vaccine against the pathogen.
 Under that condition, the pathogen would then acquire an
economic value and a profit-making potential; the operation
would properly be termed industrial microbiology.
 Multi-disciplinary or Team-work Nature of
Industrial Microbiology

 The microbiologist in an industrial establishment

does not function by himself.
 In a modern industrial microbiology organization
these others may include chemical or production
engineers, biochemists, economists, lawyers,
marketing experts, and other high-level
functionaries.
 They all cooperate to achieve the purpose of the
firm, which is not philanthropy, (at least not
immediately) but the generation of profit or
wealth.
 Despite the necessity for team work emphasized
above, the microbiologist or biotechnologist has a
central and key role in his organization.
 Some of his functions include:
a. the selection of the organism to be used in the
processes;
b. the choice of the medium of growth of the
organism;
c. the determination of the environmental conditions
for the organism’s optimum productivity i.e., pH,
temperature, aeration, etc.
d. during the actual production the microbiologist or
biotechnologist must monitor the process for the absence
of contaminants, and participate in quality control to ensure
uniformity of quality in the products;
e. the proper custody of the organisms usually in a culture
collection, so that their desirable properties are retained;
f. the improvement of the performance of the microorganisms
by genetic manipulation or by medium reconstitution.
Obsolescence in Industrial Microbiology

 As profit is the motivating factor in the pursuit of

industrial microbiology, less efficient methods are
discarded as better ones are discovered.
 Indeed a microbiological method may be discarded
entirely in favor of a cheaper chemical method.
 This was the case with ethanol for example which
up till about 1930 was produced by fermentation.
 When cheaper chemical methods using petroleum
as the substrate became available in about 1930,
fermentation ethanol was virtually abandoned.
 From the mid-1970s the price of petroleum has
climbed steeply.
 It has once again become profitable to produce
ethanol by fermentation.
 Several countries notably Brazil, India and the
United States have officially announced the
production of ethanol by fermentation for blending
into gasoline as gasohol
 Free Communication of Procedures in
Industrial Microbiology
 Many procedures employed in industrial
microbiology do not become public property for a
long time because the companies which discover
them either keep them secret, or else patent them.
 The undisclosed methods are usually blandly
described as ‘know-how’.
 The reason for the secrecy is obvious and is
designed to keep the owner of the secret one step
ahead of his/her competitors.
 For this reason, industrial microbiology textbooks
often lag behind in describing methods employed in
industry.
 PATENTS AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN
INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

 All over the world, governments set up patent or intellectual

property laws, which have two aims.
 First, they are intended to induce an inventor to disclose
something of his/her invention.
 Second, patents ensure that an invention is not exploited
without some reward to the inventor for his/her innovation;
anyone wishing to use a patented invention would have to pay
the patentee for its use.
THE USE OF THE WORD ‘FERMENTATION’ IN
INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY

 The word fermentation comes from the Latin verb

fevere, which means to boil.
 It originated from the fact that early at the start of
wine fermentation gas bubbles are released
continuously to the surface giving the impression of
boiling.
 It has three different meanings which might be
confusing.
The first meaning relates to microbial physiology.
 In strict physiological terms, fermentation is
defined in microbiology as the type of metabolism
of a carbon source in which energy is generated by
substrate level phosphorylation and in which
organic molecules function as the final electron
acceptor (or as acceptors of the reducing
equivalents) generated during the break-down of
carbon-containing compounds or catabolism.
 As is well-known, when the final acceptor is an
inorganic compound the process is called
respiration.
 Respiration is referred to as aerobic if the final
acceptor is oxygen and anaerobic when it is some
other inorganic compound outside oxygen e.g
sulphate or nitrate.
The second usage of the word is in industrial
microbiology, where the term ‘fermentation’ is any
process in which micro-organisms are grown on a
large scale, even if the final electron acceptor is not
an organic compound (i.e. even if the growth is
carried out under aerobic conditions).
 Thus, the production of penicillin, and the growth
of yeast cells which are both highly aerobic, and the
production of ethanol or alcoholic beverages which
are fermentations in the physiological sense, are all
referred to as fermentations.
The third usage concerns food.
 A fermented food is one, the processing of which
microorganisms play a major part.
 Microorganisms determine the nature of the food through
producing the flavor components as well deciding the
general character of the food, but microorganisms form
only a small portion of the finished product by weight.
 Foods such as cheese, bread, and yoghurt are fermented
foods.
ORGANIZATIONAL SET-UP IN AN INDUSTRIAL
MICROBIOLOGY ESTABLISHMENT

 The organization of a fermentation industrial establishment

will vary from one firm to another and will depend on what
is being produced.
 Nevertheless the diagram in Fig. 1.1 represents in general
terms the set-up in a fermentation industry.