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Lipopeptides represent a class of microbial surfactants with increasing scientific, therapeutic and biotechnological interests. The genus Bacillus is a producer of these active compounds, and among them B. subtilis produces surfactin, the most potent biosurfactant known. These compounds can act as antibiotics, antivirals, antitumorals, immunomodulators and enzyme inhibitors. In this work, the antimicrobial activity of biosurfactants obtained by cultivation of B. subtilis R14 was investigated against multidrug-resistant bacteria. During cultivation in defined medium, the surface tension of the medium was reduced from 54 mN/m in the beginning of the microbial growth to 30 mN/m after 20 hours. A crude surfactant concentration of 2.0 g/L was obtained after 40 hours of cultivation. A preliminary characterization suggested that two surfactants were produced. The evaluation of the antimicrobial activity of these compounds was carried out against 29 bacteria. Enterococcus faecalis (11 strains), Staphylococcus aureus (6 strains) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (7 strains) and Escherichia coli CI 18 (1 strain) displayed a profile of well defined drug resistance. All strains were sensitive to the surfactants, in particular Enterococcus faecalis. The results demonstrated that lipopeptides have a broad spectrum of action, including antimicrobial activity against microorganisms with multidrug-resistant profiles.

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In this work, the growth of Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis, a bioinsecticide producer, is investigated. Experiments were carried out in batch mode in order to obtain kinetic model parameters that were further applied to simulate fed-batch processes. The fed-batch mode allows more flexibility in the control of the substrate concentration in the culture medium. Different techniques, such as constant feeding, "bang-bang" control and model based control (exponential feeding and singular control), were compared. For the techniques based on a model, combinations of models with and without a substrate inhibition parameter were used to represent the simulated process and the internal model of the feeding controller. Singular control based on the model with an inhibition parameter proved to be the most robust controller

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