Perstraction of intracellular pigments by submerged cultivation of Monascus in nonionic surfactant micelle aqueous solution

Abstract

"Milking processing" describes the cultivation of microalgae in a water-organic solvent two-phase system that consists of simultaneous fermentation and secretion of intracellular product. It is usually limited by the conflict between the biocompatibility of the organic solvent to the microorganisms and the ability of the organic solvent to secret intracellular product into its extracellular broth. In the present work, submerged cultivation of Monascus in the nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 micelle aqueous solution for pigment production is exploited, in which the fungus Monascus remains actively growing. Permeabilization of intracellular pigments across the cell membrane and extraction of the pigments to the nonionic surfactant micelles of its fermentation broth occur simultaneously. "Milking" the intracellular pigments in the submerged cultivation of Monascus is a perstraction process. The perstractive fermentation of intracellular pigments has the advantage of submerged cultivation by secretion of the intracellular pigments to its extracellular broth and the benefit of extractive microbial fermentation by solubilizing the pigments into nonionic surfactant micelles. It is shown as the marked increase of the extracellular pigment concentration by the submerged cultivation of Monascus in the nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 micelle solution.

Accumulation of yellow Monascus pigments by extractive fermentation in nonionic surfactant micelle aqueous solution

“…Extractive fermentation exports Monascus pigments from cell interiors into its extracellular broth (Hu et al 2012;Kang et al 2013b). An interesting phenomenon was that orange Monascus pigments were accumulated intracellularly during submerged culture of Monascus anka in an aqueous solution while both extracellular and intracellular yellow ones were produced during extractive fermentation (Fig.…”

“…In our previous work, extractive fermentation of intracellular Monascus pigments carried out successfully in nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 micelle aqueous solution (Hu et al 2012). It was observed that the profile of Monascus pigments was affected by both pH of the culture medium and extractive fermentation (Kang et al 2013a).…”

Transferring of red Monascus pigments from nonionic surfactant to hydrophobic ionic liquid by novel microemulsion extraction

“…The hydrophobic Monascus pigments are majorly accumulated intracellularly in conventional submerged aqueous culture. Recently, nonionic surfactant micelle aqueous solution is further developed for extractive fermentation of intracellular Monascus pigments [9], in which secretion of intracellular product and regulation of secondary microbial metabolites are fulfilled at the same time [10,11]. Especially, extractive fermentation in the nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 micelle aqueous solution with high MSG (monosodium glutamate) concentration produces the high color hue of red Monascus pigment derivates with MSG (monosodium glutamate) residue (Fig.…”

Saturation effect and transmembrane conversion of Monascus pigment in nonionic surfactant aqueous solution

“…In submerged fermentation, Monascus pigments are mainly synthesized and accumulated in the mycelia (Chen and Johns 1993), in which two orange pigments (rubropunctatin and monascorubrin), two red pigments (rubropunctamine and monascorubramine) and two yellow pigments (monascin and ankaflavin) have been identified as the main intracellular pigments (Feng et al 2012). However, accumulation of the intracellular pigments trapped in the mycelia became a significant challenge for the higher productivity of the total pigments due to the feedback inhibition and production degradation (Hu et al 2012a; Chen et al 2015). …”