Scope of Biotechnology and Industrial Microbiology

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Scope of Biotechnology and Industrial
Microbiology
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NATURE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY ANDINDUSTRIAL
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.

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• 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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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Multi-disciplinary or Team-work Nature
ofIndustrial 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.

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• 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 organisms optimum
  productivity i.e., pH, temperature, aeration, etc.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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

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Free Communication of Procedures inIndustrial
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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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