Abstract
A high percentage of the pigments produced by Talaromyces spp. remains inside the cell, which could lead to a high product concentration inhibition. To overcome this issue an extractive fermentation process, perstraction, was suggested, which involves the extraction of the intracellular products out of the cell by using a two-phase system during the fermentation. The present work studied the effect of various surfactants on secretion of intracellular pigments produced by Talaromyces spp. in submerged fermentation. Surfactants used were: non-ionic surfactants (Tween 80, Span 20 and Triton X-100) and a polyethylene glycerol polymer 8000, at different concentrations (5, 20, 35 g/L). The highest extracellular pigment yield (16 OD500nm) was reached using Triton X-100 (35 g/L), which was 44% higher than the control (no surfactant added). The effect of addition time of the selected surfactant was further studied. The highest extracellular pigment concentration (22 OD500nm) was achieved when the surfactant was added at 120 h of fermentation. Kinetics of extracellular and intracellular pigments were examined. Total pigment at the end of the fermentation using Triton X-100 was 27.7% higher than the control, confirming that the use of surfactants partially alleviated the product inhibition during the pigment production culture.
Highlights
In recent years, consumer trends have been oriented to natural products, especially in the food industry
The application of the cloud point system has been reviewed as an advantageous pre-concentration step prior to purification in many bioprocesses, such as extraction of fatty acids from microalgae cultures [18]; extractive fermentation of proteins produced by bacteria [24]; production of L-phenylacetylcarbinol by Sacharomyces cerevisiae [25] and in exporting intracellular pigments produced by Monascus into its fermentation broth [20,22,26]. The application of this concept to submerged fermentation of Talaromyces spp. has not been studied, and the objective of this work was to analyse the effect of various surfactants, at different concentrations, on secreting the intracellular pigments produced by Talaromyces spp. into the fermentation broth
As a first step towards developing a non-ionic surfactant micelle aqueous solution as a fermentation media, a screening of the non-ionic surfactants most commonly used in bioprocess was performed [22,23]
Summary
Consumer trends have been oriented to natural products, especially in the food industry. Consumer expectations have led the food processing industry to improve processes in order to deliver high quality-products [1]. Natural colourants are obtained from sources like plants [4,5], insects [6] and microorganisms [7]. Application of microbial pigments still represents a major challenge to biotechnology due to lower extraction or production yields. Dufosse et al (2014) [8] emphasised in their fungal pigments review, the crucial role that filamentous fungi are currently playing as microbial cell factories, mainly due to the attractive range of stable bio-colourants that they are able to synthesise under controlled conditions.
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