INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY

Industrial Microbiology, is concerned with all aspects of business that relate to microbiology. In a more restricted sense, industrial microbiology is concerned with

(i) Employing microorganisms to produce a desired product, and with

(ii) Preventing microbes from diminishing the economic value of various products.

It is an important area of applied microbiology. It refers to the use of microorganisms in commercial enterprise and Cheap raw materials are converted to valuable products through the metabolism of microbes.

Various commercial products of economic value made by microbes are :
(i) Medicines i.e. pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, steroids, human protein, vaccines,and vitamins,

(ii)Organicacids,

(iii)Aminoacids,
(vi)Enzymes,
(v)Alcohols,
(vi)Organic solvents and
(vii) Synthetic fuels.

  In addition to these, quite recently potential of microbes could also be realised in

(viii)Recovery of metals from ores through bioleaching,

(ix)Recovery of petrol, and
(x) Single cell protein production - the use of microbes themselves as food.

Use of microbes to obtain a product or service of economic value constitutes industrial microbiology. Any process mediated by or involving microorganisms in which a product of economic value is obtained is called fermentation.

The activities in industrial microbiology begin with the isolation of microorganisms from nature, their screening for product formation, improvement of product yields, maintenance of cultures, mass culture using bioreactors, and usually end with the recovery of products and their purification.

The microorganisms used in industrial processes may be natural isolates, laboratory selected mutants or genetically engineered organisms.

 Industrial microbiology or microbial biotechnology encompasses the use of microorganisms in the manufacture of food or industrial products.

The microbial product may be microbial cells (living or dead), microbial biomass, and components of microbial cells, intracellular or extracellular enzymes or chemicals produced by the microbes utilizing the medium constituents or the provided substrate.

The use of microorganisms for the production of food, either human or animal, is often considered a branch of food microbiology.

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MICROBIAL POPULATION GENETICS

Bacterial population genetics is the study of natural bacterial genetic diversity arising from evolutionary processes. The roles of molecular mistakes, restriction–modification, plasmids and gene transfer in bacteria are also important components of population genetics. These aspects are of considerable scientific importance from a fundamental perspective, because of the short generation times of bacteria, their microscopic cell size, the large population sizes bacteria can achieve and their different mechanisms of gene transfer.

Microbial population genetics is a rapidly advancing field of investigation with relevance to many areas of science. The subject encompasses theoretical issues such as the origins and evolution of species, sex and recombination. Population genetics lays the foundations for tracking the origin and evolution of antibiotic resistance and deadly infectious pathogens and is also an essential tool in the utilization of beneficial microbes.

The knowledge of genetic diversity in bacterial population has increased considerably over the last 15 years, due to the application of molecular techniques to microbial ecological studies. Among the molecular methods, the PCR-based techniques provide a powerful and high throughput approach for the study of genetic diversity in bacterial populations. PCR fingerprinting methods for the analysis of biodiversity are numerous and usually very effective.

                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                your suggestions and comments are encouraged