Elsevier

Biotechnology Advances

Volume 37, Issue 2, March–April 2019, Pages 319-339
Biotechnology Advances

Research review paper
Newly isolated microorganisms with potential application in biotechnology

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2019.01.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Nowadays, food, cosmetic, environmental and pharmaceutical fields are searching for alternative processes to obtain their major products in a more sustainable way. This fact is related to the increasing demand from the consumer market for natural products to substitute synthetic additives. Industrial biotechnology appears as a promising area for this purpose; however, the success of its application is highly dependent of the availability of a suitable microorganism. To overcome this drawback, the isolation of microorganisms from diverse sources, including fermented food, adverse environments, contaminated samples or agro-industrial wastes is an important approach that can provide a more adaptable strain able to be used as biocatalyst and that exhibit resistance to industrial conditions and high yields/productivities in biotechnological production of natural compounds. The aim of this review is to provide a solid set of information on the state of the art of isolation and screening studies for obtaining novel biocatalysts able to produce natural compounds, focusing in aromas, biosurfactants, polysaccharides and microbial oils.

Introduction

The biotechnological production of ingredients emerges as an attractive alternative for industrial purposes, since it occurs at mild conditions, presents high regio- and enantio-selectivity and do not generate toxic wastes (Pessôa et al., 2017). Additionally, the bioproducts obtained may be labeled as “natural” when obtained from microorganisms, plants, or animal cells at a relatively low cost (Vespermann et al., 2017). Among these biocatalysts, microorganisms are of particular interest because of their great metabolic diversity for modifying and upgrading a variety of complex organic molecules (Palmerín-Carreño et al., 2015). In whole cell biocatalysts, membranes and walls protect the enzymes from shear forces and other factors while cofactors can be regenerated within the cell under certain conditions (De Carvalho and da Fonseca, 2006).

In this sense, screening assays must be developed and need to be established considering challenging substrates, process conditions and products diversity, quantity and purity (Emmerstorfer-Augustin et al., 2016). Thus, different methods and strategies have been developed and proposed in the technical literature in the most diverse areas: from the search of novel bioactive compounds for the field of drug discovery using genome sequencing and microorganism co-culture, to agricultural applications with the development of a spectrophotometric screening method for avermectin oxidizing microbes (Bertrand et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2017). It was also shown the development of a fast and simple method for rapid screening of phosphate accumulating microorganisms that allow a large number of strains to be screened based on color assay (Chaudhry and Nautiyal, 2011).

In some areas, mutations and metabolic engineering techniques are being used, for example for selection of potential lactic acid producing strains through the development of a high automated colorimetric method based on sequential enzymatic reactions (Liaud et al., 2014). Several molecular methods to study the microbiota of soil and the mycosphere are being evaluated, such as metagenomics and metatranscriptomics combined with cultivation-based approaches (Van Elsas and Boersma, 2011). On the other hand, these advanced techniques for screening can still be expensive for this purpose and complicated with a lack of suitable compounds for high-throughput assays, leading to new strategies such as the development of chromogenic probes for efficient screening and evaluation of feruloyl esterase-like activities. The hydrolysis of the chromogenic compounds substrates leads to a color change which can be readily monitored in both qualitative solid medium-based and quantitative liquid assays (Gherbovet et al., 2016).

In this way, the selection of new isolates is a wide field of commercial exploration, besides opening several possibilities for industrial bioprocesses development targeting for fine chemical production, that are increasingly relying on cell factories developed through metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. The use of high throughput techniques and automation for the design of cell factories, and especially platform strains, has played an important role in the transition from laboratory research to industrial production, aiming to facilitate the process and the analysis in some types of application (Jullesson et al., 2015).

Despite of the great diversity of methods that have been developed for the selection of new biocatalysts for the most diverse areas of research, in this material we analyzed the potential of the selection of microorganisms for the future of industrial biotechnology in the production of important ingredients, such as biosurfactants, bioflavors, microbial lipids and polysaccharides (Fig. 1). In this sense, we provide an overview of the current status of microbial selection describing numerous processes that achieved promising results through long screening processes for a wide variety of industries including food, chemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic. We also present the conditions used during the screening trials, process conditions, strains found, and the main characteristics that make the development of these bioprocesses important for the future of the biotechnology industry.

Section snippets

Bioflavors

Flavors and aromas are widely applied in food, cosmetic, chemical and pharmaceutical industries in order to supplement, enhance, or modify the original taste/aroma of the product, and thus, presenting great importance over the acceptance of products by the consumer market (Bicas et al., 2010; Palmerín-Carreño et al., 2015; Burdock, 2010). These compounds are remarkable for their volatility and chemical diversity, including lactones, hydrocarbons, alcohols, ketones, vanillin, terpenes, aldehydes

Conclusion

Considering the extent of application of biotechnological ingredients and the essential role of microorganisms in these processes, there is a great interest in the selection of new biocatalysts able to resist the conditions of industrial processes, with high selectivity and high productivity rates, besides being able to generate important compounds with commercial interest, enabling the association of the production scale with an affordable cost of biotechnological products.

In this sense,

Conflict of interest

Authors declare that they do not have conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

Authors acknowledge the funding agencies Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq – Process number 460897/2014-4; 140513/2016-7), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP – Process number 2013/18390-0), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (Fapemig – Process number CAG – APQ-01056-17) and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes).

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