Fermentation trip: amazing microbes, amazing metabolisms

Abstract

Fermentation has been applied to many areas of human life, including industrial production, sewage treatment, and environment management. By understanding the process and mechanism of fermentation, more comprehensive and profound cognition of the fermentation may be established to lay a foundation for our further research. In this review, we present a brief summary of recent research about fermentation and microorganisms in different territories, including foods, environment, and human health. According to the growth characteristics of different stages of microorganisms, we introduced a series of metabolic changes, fermentation mechanism, and regulation methods and how the enzymes were transported out of the cell. With further understanding and utilization of microorganisms, food can produce better flavor, nutrition, and functional metabolites through fermentation. Fermentation is also used in other industries, such as wastewater and garbage disposal, environment, and soil management. The human gut flora, in particular, has begun to receive more attention. The profound influence of microorganism on human health cannot to be underestimated. It has become a hot research area in recent years. We can get the metabolites we want by controlling the rate of fermentation and regulate the direction of fermentation. As one of the important components of modern biotechnology, fermentation engineering has been widely used in areas including food, pharmaceutical, energy, chemical industries, and environmental protection. The development of genetic engineering has brought new vitality to fermentation engineering. The application of modernization, automation and artificial intelligence technology also opens up new space for fermentation engineering. In addition, research on the understanding and regulation of metabolic mechanism has further developed the fermentation function of microorganisms.