Microbes in Industrial Products

Beyond household foods, microbes are harnessed industrially to manufacture a wide range of valuable products — beverages, antibiotics, organic acids, amino acids, vitamins, biofuels, single-cell protein, enzymes, steroids, vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs. Large-scale production requires growing selected microbial strains in huge closed vessels called fermentors or bioreactors, which are engineered with controls for aeration, agitation, temperature and pH, plus a drain or overflow outlet to remove spent biomass once the desired product has accumulated. The sub-sections that follow look at three major categories of industrial m …