Effects of Used and Fresh Palm Oil on Prodigiosin Production for Potential Sunscreen Agent

Abstract

Prodigiosin is a secondary metabolite red pigment and has unique triperrole structure and produced by gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria from gamma-proteobacteria and actinomycetes class. It is located in the within the cell membrane, extracellular vesicle, and intracellular granules, thus, it needs to be extracted to obtain prodigiosin. Prodigiosin has many properties such as antioxidant, anticancer, anti-microbial and anti-proliferative properties and it can be used in food, textile, and pharmaceutical industry as a natural colourant. Prodigiosin is produced through fermentation process Serratia nematodiphila. There was high demand in producing natural pigments due to toxicity of synthetic pigment and high-cost production of prodigiosin. The prodigiosin production were affected by many parameters such as concentration and type of substrates during fermentation. The substrates such as carbon and nitrogen sources are main substrates affected the prodigiosin production. This study aimed to enhance prodigiosin production by comparing the effect of used and fresh palm oil and prodigiosin as a potential sunscreen agent. The prodigiosin production was done through fermentation of Serratia nematodiphila in a shake flask and extracted by using acidified methanol. The effect of production of prodigiosin was determined at different concentration of different carbon sources which are used palm oil and fresh palm oil with constant value of pH, temperature, agitation speed to produced high yield of prodigiosin. In vitro sun protection factor (SPF) was used to determine the spectrophotometric SPF value of the prodigiosin. The highest yield of prodigiosin production with 8 % (w/v) of used palm oil was 463.938 µmol/L and with 9 % (w/v) of fresh palm oil was 518.84 µmol/L. The specific growth rate was 0.112 h-1 and doubling time was 6.18 h with 8% of used palm oil at incubation time of 46 h. While for 8 % fresh palm oil had specific growth rate of 0.104 and doubling time of 6.69 at incubation time for 40h. The SPF value with 1 % (w/v) of prodigiosin was 3.68.