Potato Juice, a Starch Industry Waste, as a Cost-Effective Medium for the Biosynthesis of Bacterial Cellulose.

Daria Ciecholewska-Juśko,Paweł Migdał,Peter Sobolewski,Anna Żywicka,Adam Junka,Michał Broda,Karol Fijałkowski,Daniel Styburski,Krzysztof Gorący

doi:10.3390/ijms221910807

Abstract

In this work, we verified the possibility of valorizing a major waste product of the potato starch industry, potato tuber juice (PJ). We obtained a cost-effective, ecological-friendly microbiological medium that yielded bacterial cellulose (BC) with properties equivalent to those from conventional commercial Hestrin–Schramm medium. The BC yield from the PJ medium (>4 g/L) was comparable, despite the lack of any pre-treatment. Likewise, the macro- and microstructure, physicochemical parameters, and chemical composition showed no significant differences between PJ and control BC. Importantly, the BC obtained from PJ was not cytotoxic against fibroblast cell line L929 in vitro and did not contain any hard-to-remove impurities. The PJ-BC soaked with antiseptic exerted a similar antimicrobial effect against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as to BC obtained in the conventional medium and supplemented with antiseptic. These are very important aspects from an application standpoint, particularly in biomedicine. Therefore, we conclude that using PJ for BC biosynthesis is a path toward significant valorization of an environmentally problematic waste product of the starch industry, but also toward a significant drop in BC production costs, enabling wider application of this biopolymer in biomedicine.

Highlights

We demonstrate an environmentally friendly strategy toward valorizing a major agro-industrial waste product and the possibility of a significant drop in costs related to bacterial cellulose (BC) synthesis, which should correlate with the wider application of this biopolymer in a wide range of industrial branches, including biomedicine
Ethanol is typically supplemented into HS media because it is a stimulating/initiating factor for BC biosynthesis by K. xylinus [7]
Our results demonstrate that potato tuber juice (PJ) is suitable as a source of nutrients for cellulose-producing K. xylinus bacteria

Summary

Introduction

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a versatile biopolymer, most effectively synthesized by non-pathogenic bacteria, Komagataeibacter xylinus. BC is a linear polysaccharide consisting of β-1,4-glucan chains [1]. In contrast to plant-derived cellulose, BC is characterized by flexibility and high chemical purity. It does not contain lignins, pectins, or hemicelluloses, the presence of which significantly prolongs the purification process of cellulose from plants [2,3,4]. BC has high mechanical strength and water holding capacity owing to its dense fiber structure [5]. BC can be considered biocompatible and non-toxic, as well as biodegradable, owing to the

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