Review Article: Bacteriocin Production and its Application in Food and Pharmaceuticals

Bacteriocins are ribosomal - synthesized antimicrobial peptides that inhibit the growing of pathogenic or deteriorating bacteria. Bacteriocin are a heterogenous group of bioactive bacterial peptides or proteins having variable biochemical properties. Bacteriocin is introduced to denote toxic proteins or peptide produced by any type of bacteria that is active on related bacteria but does not harm the producing cell. They are antimicrobial peptides which are ribosomally synthesized and produced by Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB). Now days, there are various hazardous effect of chemicals. Instead of chemicals, bacteriocins are mostly effective in food technology which aims to extend food preservation time, treat pathogen diseases, cancer therapy & maintain human health. In food processing, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) shows numerous anti-microbial activities. This is mainly due to production of organic acid, but also of other compound, such as bacteriocin and various peptides. Bacteriocins are used as a potential drug for replacing antibiotics in order to treat multiple drug resistance pathogens. The important mechanism of bacteriocins is pore formation. Bacteriocins are used as food preservation against contaminating organism. It also used against anti-tumor drug in pharmaceutical. They play major role in prevention of human diseases such as cancer, inflammatory diseases, respiratory infection, intestinal disorders, etc. The species of Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Escherichia, Klebsiella, Lactobacillus, Pseudomonas, Proteus are successfully used. These are isolated from vegetables, dairy, cheese, meat and other products. Therefore, Bacteriocin may become a potential drug candidates for replacing antibiotics in order to treat multiple drugs resistance pathogens in the future. Bacteriocin become one of the weapons against micro-organisms due to the specific characteristics of large diversity of structure and function, natural resource and being stable to heat.