Industrial Biotechnology - Essay Example

? Industrial Biotechnology Industrial biotechnology has provided products that have impacted our lives. These products have profoundly changed our lives, environment, and economy. They include industrial and agricultural products, food additives, healthcare products, and biofuels. The development of penicillin fermentation in the 1940s marked the beginning of industrial biotechnology. This resulted in production of a large number of metabolites of commercial importance by fermentation. No doubt, Industrial biotechnology has successfully established in some sectors, is still in its infancy. Its revolution rides on a series of concurrently related advances in three areas: genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics. It is now possible to manipulate genetic information and design products, or to even tweak gene expression and genetic information can be transferred between markedly different groups of organisms. Recombinant DNA technology and molecular manipulations have been exploited to improve the production by increasing titers and yields of microbial processes. Introduction Industrial biotechnology is the application of biotechnology for production and processing of chemicals, materials, pharmaceuticals, and bio-energy with less energy consumption, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, higher yields and reduced waste. It uses enzymes and micro-organisms to environmentally friendly manufacturing of products by maximizing and optimizing already established and utilized biochemical pathways. Industrial biotechnology, also known as white biotechnology, has developed rapidly in the last several decades and has enormous potential and versatility in manufacturing with higher yield and titer. The industry’s economy i.e. Bioeconomy has made a substantial impact in the world economy, is growing at rate without historical precedence. It has no doubt, revolutionized almost every sector of economy whether, it is agriculture or healthcare or petroleum industry. Today, biotechnology is a major participant in global economy and promise to be a major player in next a couple of decades. According to Steve Burrill, President and CEO of Burrill & Co at BIO (Biotechnology industry organization) conference, May 2010 in Chicago, USA said with his trade mark optimism that “those in the industry were fortunate to be alive at this time, when all current world problems -- climate change, sustainability, energy security, food production and security, and healthcare reform could be tackled if not solved by biotechnology”. To-day’s world’s economy is facing a range of environmental, social, and economic challenges, development and deployment of biotechnology tools can provide opportunities for renewed economic growth. No doubt, it has already successfully established in some sectors, is still in its infancy. It is a market reality and has consumer demand, from new innovative approaches with huge promise to lower the carbon footprint. Major Products of Industrial Biotechnology Industrial biotechnology has provided products that have impacted our lives. These products have profoundly changed our lives, environment, and economy. They include industrial and agricultural products, food additives, healthcare products, and biofuels. The development of penicillin fermentation in the 1940s marked the beginning of industrial biotechnology. This resulted in production of a large number of metabolites of commercial importance by fermentation. Primary metabolism inside a living organism involves a cascade of enzyme mediated catabolic, and anabolic reactions which provide biosynthetic intermediates and energy, and convert biosynthetic precursors into essential macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, and polysaccharides. It is finely balanced and intermediates are rarely accumulated. By deregulating primary metabolism, overproduction of many primary metabolites has been achieved in the fermentation industry. There is enormous use of biotechnological processes in production of primary and secondary metabolites. Primary and secondary metabolites are of great importance to our health, nutrition, and economics. Amino acids, nucleotides, vitamins, solvents, and organic acids comprise the primary metabolites. Antibiotics and derivatives, glycopeptides, lipopeptides, amino glycosides, and others make the list of secondary derivatives. Multibillion-dollar markets are involved in the production of these products. Amino acid The amino acid market is over $6 billion (US) and has been growing at 5–10% per year (Burkovski and Kramer 2002). Production amounts to 3 million tons per year. Amino acids such as lysine and glutamic acid are used in the food industry as nutritional supplements in bread products and as flavor enhancing compounds such as monosodium glutamate (MSG).Amino acid production is carried out using regulatory mutants, which allows unlimited synthesis of an end product. In the normal microorganism there is no overproduction of biochemical intermediates due to regulation of cellular metabolism. The glutamic acid fermentation in 1957 by Udaka, and Shimono of the Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Company(Kinoshita 1957) yielding an extracellular L - amino acid from non - proteinaceous material was the major and crucial discovery, though an accidental one. This led to the development of the amino acid fermentation industry. Glutamic acid the most potent of all amino acids in terms of tonnage and many other amino acids are produced in large quantities using mutants of Corynebacterium glutamicum that lack, or have limited ability to process, the TCA cycle intermediate, ketoglutarate to succinyl-CoA. A controlled low biotin level and the addition of fatty acid derivatives results in increased membrane permeability and excretion of high concentrations of glutamic acid. The impaired bacteria use the glyoxylate pathway to meet their needs for essential biochemical intermediates, especially during the growth phase. After growth becomes limited because of changed nutrient availability, an almost complete molar conversion of isocitrate to glutamate occurs. Lysine, an essential amino acid used to supplement cereals and breads, was originally produced in a two-step microbial process. This has been replaced by a single-step fermentation in which the bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum, blocked in the synthesis of homoserine, accumulates lysine. Over 44 g/liter can be produced in 3 day fermentation. Recombinant DNA techniques and other applications of genetic engineering has made great contribution in increasing carbon flow removal of bottlenecks caused by accumulation of intermediates, efficient transport and improved feed back controls. As a result of genetic and physiological manipulations, fermentation titers have reached a very high level. Vitamins Microbes produce seven vitamins or vitamin-like compounds commercially: beta-carotene, vitamin B12, vitamin B13, riboflavin, vitamin C, linolenic acid, vitamin F, and ergosterol. Riboflavin (vitamin B2) was produced commercially for many years by both fermentation and chemical synthesis (Demain 1972). More than 70,000 tons Vitamins are produced per year by synthesis and fermentation. Most fungi produce enough riboflavin (vitamin B2) for their growth, but a few species overproduce it, namely Eremothecium ashbyi and Ashbya gossypii. Overproduction in natural strains of E. ashbyi was discovered in 1935 by Guilliermond and coworkers (Campbell 1989).They noted the yellow color of the colonies of both cultures, E. ashbyi being the more intense with rosettes of needle - shaped crystals of riboflavin. This led to the use of E. ashbyi for the industrial production of riboflavin in animal feed (Omura and Crump 2004). E. ashbyi was replaced in industry by the more stable A. gossypii which produced, after genetic manipulation, over 20 g/l of the vitamin (Demain 1972). An rDNA process was also used for riboflavin in Corynebacterium ammoniagenes by cloning and over expressing the organism’s own riboflavin biosynthesis genes and its own promoter sequences. The culture produced 15 g/l riboflavin in 3 days (Koizumi et al.2000). Genetic engineering has been tried with many other strains, like Bacillus subtilis strain already containing purine analog - resistance mutations led to production of 15 g/l riboflavin (Perkins et al.1993). Bacterial formation of vitamin B 12 by bacteria is a very old phenomenon. As reported by Demain et al (1968) that Streptomyces griseus and Pseudomonas denitrifi cans could form vitamin B12. Fermentation was used exclusively at a rate of 12 tons/year in the early 2000s. Vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid) has been produced almost completely by chemical synthesis (Reichstein process) for many years. This otherwise chemical process utilizes one bioconversion reaction, the oxidation of D-sorbitol to L-sorbose. The Reichstein process will probably have to compete with commercial fermentation approaches in the next few years (Hancock and Viola 2002). Antibiotics These are remarkable group of compounds of biologically active molecules with different structures and modes of action. They attack virtually every type of microbial activity such as synthesis of DNA, RNA, and proteins, membrane function, electron transport, and many others. The golden era of antibiotics began with the accidental discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1929 in England (Fleming 1929). He noted that some of his plates containing Staphylococcus aureus were contaminated with a mold, Penicillium notatum, and was surprised to see that none of the bacterial colonies could grow in the vicinity of the mold. Fleming concluded that the mold was producing some kind of inhibitory agent. He named the agent penicillin. Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, the first successful chemotherapeutic agent produced by a microbe, initiated the golden age of the wonder drugs. Since 1940, there has been a virtual explosion of new and potent antibiotic molecules which have been of great use in medicine, agriculture, and basic research. However, discovery of new antibiotics drastically came down after the 1970s. The search for new antibiotics must continue in order to combat evolving pathogens, and drug resistant microbes that have evolved. About 6,000 antibiotics have been described, 4,000 from actinomycetes. Streptomyces griseus strains produce over 40 different antibiotics and strains of B. subtilis make over 60 compounds. Strains of Streptomyces hygroscopicus make almost 200 antibiotics. The antibiotics vary in size from small molecules like cycloserine (102 Daltons) and bacilysin (270 Daltons) to polypeptides such as nisin, which contains 34 amino acid residues. The antibiotic market includes about 160 antibiotics and derivatives such as the ?-lactam peptide antibiotics, the macrolide polyketides and other polyketides, tetracyclines, aminoglycosides, and others (Brown 1996 and Strohl 1997). In the pursuit of more-effective antibiotics, new products are made chemically by modification of natural antibiotics; this process is called semisynthesis. The most striking examples are the semisynthetic penicillins and cephalosporins, erythromycins (e.g., azithromycin, clarithromycin), and the recently introduced tetracycline, tigecycline. For the discovery of new or modified products, recombinant DNA techniques are being used to introduce genes coding for antibiotic synthetases into producers of other antibiotics or into non-producing strains to obtain modified or hybrid antibiotics (Epp et al. 1989). Biofuels Ethanol production is probably the oldest fermentation process known. Until the 1980s, it was mainly used for to make alcoholic beverages, since then it was used as a clean fuel, especially for automobiles. The production of beverage alcohol was restricted to the use of microorganisms (e.g., yeast) but that of industrial and fuel alcohol was usually carried out by chemical synthesis from petroleum; this eventually changed in favor of yeasts. Under optimum conditions, approximately 10 – 12% ethanol by volume was obtained in yeast fermentations within 5 days. Such a high concentration slowed down growth and the fermentation ceased. With special (saki) yeasts, the fermentation could be continued to only after months of fermentation. In 1977, yeast production of beverage, fuel, and fuel alcohol was 20% less than by chemical synthesis. However, by 1984, yeasts provided 87% more ethanol than did chemical synthesis. Due to the elimination of lead from gasoline, ethanol was substituted as a blend to raise gasoline’s octane rating. Later, it was added to gasoline to reduce CO2 emissions by improving the overall oxidation and performance of gasoline. Fuel ethanol produced from biomass is being considered as a means to provide relief from air pollution caused by use of gasoline without contributing to the greenhouse effect (Ingram et al. 1987). The available feedstock in the United States could supply 20 billion gallons of fuel ethanol. New processes have been developed to convert biomass to ethanol and rDNA technology has been used to convert E. coli and its close relatives into efficient producers of ethanol (43% yield, v/v) (Doran et al 1993). Advances in synthetic biology have enabled innovative manufacturing of biofuels, biomaterials and biopolymers. It has consumer demand, more than ever before, from new innovative approaches which lower the carbon footprint. Manufacturing facilities are producing first-generation biofuels, technical approaches are being sought to produce second-generation renewable biofuels from cellulosics, and research continues to accelerate in advanced biofuels which would give rise to the possibility of more stable molecules having improved performance properties beyond bioethanol. The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) for transportation fuels set minimum levels of renewable fuels that must be blended into gasoline and other transportation fuels. Specific requirements for blending advanced biofuels including cellulosic biofuels and biomass-based biodiesel fuel, is expected to increase many fold. Algae based fuel technology is advancing rapidly toward commercial- scale viability. Conclusion No doubt, Industrial biotechnology has successfully established in some sectors, is still in its infancy. Its revolution rides on a series of concurrently related advances in three areas: genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics. 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