Probiotic cell cultivation

SANTOS M; TYMCZYSZYN E; GOLOWCZYC M; MOBILI P; GOMEZ-ZAVAGLIA A

Advances in Probiotic Technology

CRC Press/Taylor & Francis

Año: 2015; p. 50 - 85

Research on lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and probiotics is nowadays an interdisciplinary field going beyond the fundamental microbiology. The commercial importance of certain microbial metabolites (i.e.: lactic acid) led to use these microorganisms as "biological factories" of valuable products. On the other hand, the worldwide ecological conscience about the importance of reducing industrial contamination stimulated the use of certain effluents as "non-traditional" culture media for LAB and probiotics. This approach has two advantages: from one side the decrease of industrial costs derived from decontamination of effluents and from the other side, the lower cost of culture media. Monitoring bacterial growth is another example of the current interdisciplinarity in the research of LAB and probiotics. Fundamental fields like physics, mathematics and statistics were determinant for the current development of environmentally friendly analytical methods allowing in situ and in real time monitoring. In this chapter, an overview of probiotic cell cultivation and monitoring including the use of both traditional and "non-traditional" culture media, the production of commercially valuable products and biomass is reported. Special emphasis was put on the fundamentals and interpretation of the information provided by analytical methods used for monitoring.