Screening of Carbon Sources for Fragrance Producing Bacterial Species

Abstract

Microbial transformation has emerged as an important approach for producing natural fragrances in high quantities. Flavour andfragrant compounds are key elements in the composition of various products offered by an array of industries, such as food, chemical, biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals, etc. When fragrances are produced using microorganisms, yields obtained are observed to be higher compared to plant and animal sources with a better quality of products. Rhodococcus erythropolis and Pseudomonas putida are the fragrance producing species that act as biocatalysts and bring the biotransformation of limonene into fragrant compounds. Limonene is an important compound that can be transformed into a variety of products such as carveol, carvone, perillyl alcohol, and perillic acid. The present study focuses on the characterization of Rhodococcus erythropolis NCIM 5234 and Pseudomonas putida NCIM 2112 strains using different carbon sources such as limonene, n-hexane, glycerol, sucrose, toluene and mannitol. The specific growth rates were calculated for each carbon source and generation time was estimated. The P putida strain could utilize and grow faster on n-hexane, glycerol and limonene with a growth rate of 0.61, 0.58, 0.51 hr-1 respectively whereas R. erythropolis has shown maximum growth rate on limonene and n-hexane 0.055 and 0.045 hr-1 respectively. Moderate growth was observed using mannitol. Resting and kinetic cell assays will be carried out using growth rate data.