New challenges to traditional biotechnology - fermentation

The process of fermentation was traditionally leveraged by the human population to increase the shelf life of perishable agricultural produce such as milk, vegetables and meat. Nowadays, fermentation has much more potentials. It can do things that we in most cases think that only can be done by recent technologies (eg: genetic manipulation, synthetic food additives, etc)

In addition to offering unique sensory sensations, as the label on the package or the advertisements will most likely tell us, several other benefits can be offered using the process of fermentation. In this article some recent developments in the health arena will be discussed.

Bacterial celullose - Another efective fat substitute

Bacterial celullose

Today´s topic is bacterial cellulose, which is produced by Gluconacetobacter xylinus and discovered in 1886 by A.J. Brown. This organism is Gram negative, has high tolerance to acid conditions, strictly aerobe and non photosynthetic. Bacterial cellulose possesses the same chemical structureetter water absorption/retention and higher biological adaptability.

Biodiesel at home - Part 1

The mechanism that I'll be presenting here it's a simple process that anyone can do it by themselves. It is called transesterification and is summed up  as the reaction of  an oil with an alcohol to form esters and glycerol.

Transesterification reaction (Fangrui et al, 1999)

Yeasts and food - Beer

Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Beer is a famous beverage mainly consumed in the north and centre European countries. It is appreciated by almost all people there and most of them don´t know that this product is in the roots of Biotechnology. Thus, a few posts will be dedicated to the origins and methods to produce this well-known product.
Traditionally and historically yeasts are associated with alcoholic fermentation. This can be well understood in face of the role of yeasts in the production of alcoholic beverages, like beer and wine.

Nanopacksafer - Safer food, happier consumer.

Imagine a natural layer evolving an apple. A layer that you can not see, that increases the apple's quality, durability and in the end it indicates if the apple if safe to eat. This new project, still in development, is the Nanopacksafer. Several universities from Portugal and Spain are in this project as the INL (Nanotechnology International Institute) situated in Braga, Portugal. The main ingredients of this product have a natural source. For example polysaccharides extracted from leguminous plants, specifically from it's seeds, or chitosan form shellfish shells. It is expected that this field of business, packages for food industry, reaches the market value of 20 billions of dollars in 2012. The principal investigator of this project is Dr. José Teixeira professor in Biological Engineering at University of Minho and principal investigator of several other projects. If you want to know more take a look in this presentation from one of the co-workers in this project. Additionally read the characteristics of the project here.

Fried eggs on continuous process

Recently a brand new technology was developed in Portugal. Fried eggs are common in our lives but not like this.

This technology was developed by a partership between Derovo, a Portuguese enterprise, and University of Minho. Both Mechanical engeneering and Biological engeneering departments contributed to this technology that is more than welcome to the portuguese economy.

Watch the video to know more about this technology and feel free to visit the websites of the envolved parts, Derovo, and University of Minho.

Principles of Gel filtration chromatography

A simple and relatively old technique, but still widely used.

Biodiesel at home

With a staggering economy, climbing gas prices and global climate change, some researchers are exploring sources other than petroleum for fuel. Organic matter is one such source. Materials like corn and soybeans have oil extracts that can be converted to ethanol or biodiesel.

Biodiesel is a clean burning, non toxic, biodegradable and environmentally friendly fuel that can be used in any compression ignition(diesel engine). It is non petroleum based fuel - that means it is not made with Fossil fuels like Oil or Coal.

In this series of posts we will learn how to do Biodiesel at home and possibly how to verify if its good and how to use it in our own cars.