In the last years, there is a trend towards the replacement of synthetic colorants by natural ones, mainly due to the increase of consumer demand for natural products. The natural colorants are used to enhance the appearance of pharmaceutical products, food, and different materials, making them preferable or attractive. This review intends to provide and describe a comprehensive overview of the history of colorants, from prehistory to modern time, of their market and their applications, as well as of the most important aspects of the fermentation process to obtain natural colorants. Focus is given to colorants produced by filamentous fungal species, aiming to demonstrate the importance of these microorganisms and biocompounds, highlighting the production performance to get high yields and the aspects of conclusion that should be taken into consideration in future studies about natural colorants.

The population interest in health products is increasing day-by-day. Thus, the demand for natural products to be added in food and pharmaceutical commodity is also rising. Among these additives, colorants, which provides color to products, can be produced by microorganism through bioprocess. Looking for new source of natural colorants, fungi have been employed to this purpose producing novel and safer natural colorants. So, the main goal of this study was to describe a Talaromyces species able to produce natural colorants and investigate nutritional parameters of colorants production using statistical tool. The taxonomy classified the microorganism as Talaromyces amestolkiae. The statistical design evaluated pH and glucose, meat extract and meat peptone concentration as independent variables, and red colorants production as main response. Under the best condition (g/L: glucose 30, meat extract 1, meat peptone 10, and initial pH of 7.0) an increase of 229% in the red colorant production was achieved as compared with the initial media used. The dried fermented broth containing red colorants showed low cytotoxicity against fibroblasts cells (IC > 187.5 g/L) and effective antimicrobial activity against S. aureus (MIC of 2.5 g/L). Thus, T. amestolkiae colorants can be attractive to food and pharmaceutical applications as it does not produce toxic compounds and can promote protection against microorganism contaminants. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 1-12, 2018.

RESUMO -Os líquidos iônicos (LIs) têm ganhado grande importância nas áreas da biotecnologia como solventes alternativos aos orgânicos, uma vez que a demanda por tecnologias mais limpas tem aumentado. Dentro deste tema, LIs podem ser adicionados a sistemas micelares de duas fases aquosas (SMDFA) para melhorar a extração de biomoléculas por esta técnica. SMDFA apresentam habilidade de manter as conformações e atividades das biomoléculas de interesse enquanto migram de fase sendo de grande interesse para extrair biomoléculas do meio fermentado. Assim, o objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar e comparar a extração de colorantes naturais vermelhos produzidos por cultivo submerso de T. amestolkiae utilizando SMDFA composto pelo surfactante não-iônico TX-114 com cloreto de colina([Ch]Cl) e butanoato de colina ([Ch]But) como adjuvantes. Foram realizados experimentos para determinação das curvas binodais dos LIs e, posteriormente, experimentos de partição com os sistemas já caracterizados. O melhor sistema foi aquele que continha butanoato de colina em sua composição.