Part IIIPurification Techniques of Bacteriocins from Lactic Acid Bacteria and other Gram-Positive Bacteria

LUCILA SAAVEDRA ; FERNANDO SESMA

Prokaryotic Antimicrobial Peptides

Springer Science + Business Media

Lugar: New York; Año: 2011; p. 99 - 113

The search for new antimicrobial peptides produced by Lactic Acid Bacteria and other Gram-positive microorganisms has become an interesting field of research for the past decades.The fact that bacteriocins are active against numerous food-borne and human pathogens, are produced by GRAS (Generally regarded as safe) microorganisms and readily degraded by proteolytic host systems make them attractive candidates for biotechnological applications. However, before suggesting or choosing a new bacteriocin for future technology developments, it is necessary to elucidate its biochemical structure and its mode of action which may be carried out once the bacteriocin is purified to homogeneity.The present chapter focuses on describing the main strategies used for the purification of numerous bacteriocins.