Recent progress in microbial cultivation techniques

Recent advances in the improvement of microbial cultivation are reviewed, with emphasis on biochemical engineering techniques as a means of obtaining high production rate of bioproduct. Possible uses of high cell density culture include their use in food industry as well as in the production of new medicines and in biotechnology. Concentration of microorganisms using a hollow fiber membrane or centrifuge, and increase in cell density by controlling the pH, dissolved oxygen, or carbon source concentrations of the culture broth with control algorithms are discussed. In a culture of filamentous microorganisms the mycelial morphology is hard to define and it is difficult to quantify its amount, and this is one of the bottlenecks hampering the improvement of production rate. Specific features of mycelial cultivation in the presence of highly pulpy mycelia and entangled-pellets are scrutinized by visual inspection through a microscope that is linked to a computer, and using software that can characterize the mycelial morphology. Image analysis technology for analyzing the mycelial image captured by a digital camera is a potential tool for morphological analysis, including analysis of the morphological development of filamentous microorganisms.