Addition of supplements in the Growth Media

Hello lovely readers.

Hope you guys are studying awesome.

Today we will discuss a few additives that are needed to be added in the media as supplements. Something similar to our vitamins and protein supplements that we take inspite of having our food.

So let us try to know what are these supplements and how do they help in bettering the yield.

First thing, what are they???

Well some components of a fermentation medium help to regulate the production of the product rather than support the growth of micro - organism. Quite obvious, because end of the day our sole purpose is to have more product rather than the cell mass. Such additives include precursors, inhibitors and inducers which help to manipulate and regulate the progress of the fermentation.

Now let's have a look at them individually.

1. Precursors - This one is really a very important component, because precursors are the one that without any modifications get directly incorporated in the product molecule. the most common and famous example of this is phenylethylamine. This is a precursor that is used to improvise the yield of penicillin. Phenylethylamine gets incorporated into the penicillin molecule to yield benzyl penicillin (Penicillin G). Sooner it was also established that the yield of penicillin depended on the side chain precursors and since then it was a practice to add phenylacetic acid in the medium as the most preferred side chain precursor. After addition of PAA, a three fold increase in the yield of penicillin was recorded. :D That's a lots my friend.
2. Inducers - Inducers are mainly used in production of enzymes. Most of the enzymes holding industrial interest are inducible. Inducers are often the substrates such as starch for amylases, pectin for pectinases, etc. Substrate analogues that are not attacked by the enzyme can also act as potent inducers. For example IPTG as a substrate analogue for galactosidase.
3. Inhibitors - also known as steering or shunting agent. The function of this component is pretty clear in the name itself. They increase the yield of a specific product while inhibiting the others or they accumulate a required intermediate which might normally get metabolized by inhibiting the further pathway. One of the common and widely used example is bromide as an inhibitor. It is used to minimize or totally inhibit the production of chlortetracycline during tetracycline fermentation.. Inhibitors also come in handy to increase the permeability of the cell wall to release the intracellular metabolites. One example here is use of penicillin or surfactants in glutamic acid production.

So that's pretty much of the important additives that we add in the media. There are also many more like antifoams, etc. which we will discuss in detail later.

In case if you have any more examples to the categories above, please do share with us :D

Also feel free to ask any question, they hold a lot of importance for me .....and my knowledge ;p

Lots of love.

High six.

-Staph <3