Isolation and Purification of Cephalosporin's from cheese whey

Antibiotics are the secondary metabolites produced by the microbes. The biosynthesis of antibiotics i.e. the secondary metabolite is not associated with the growth of mold. In microbial cultures, the production of secondary metabolites and growth related functions do not occur simultaneously. It has been observed that during the production of secondary metabolites, the cell biomass of microbe’s increases initially and after certain time, it becomes constant/decreases slightly. It was found out using DNSA method that the lactose content in the above mentioned media was 68.875mg/ml. But then the optimal concentration required for antibiotic production as stated by different published work is 3%. Hence, the concentration of lactose in the media was maintained 3% throughout the experiment by diluting the media 1:2 with distilled water. The nitrogen content found in the media by Kjeldahl distillation method were very meager amounting to only 0.00283% and the protein content being 100 mg/ml. When optimization of parameters for growth was done it was found out that at pH 5.5 maximum growth were seen. This is supported by the fact that in general all the fungal strains thrive well at a lower pH value. The temperature optimum for the growth of Acremonium chrysogenum was reported to be 28-30 o C on shaker condition at 200 rpm. The pH and temperature further optimized for secondary metabolite production were found to be 7.2 and the temperatures were kept the same. When methionine was added along with lactose, there were a shoot up in the antibiotic production. When the same combination was studied with cysteine being added not much of a difference were seen. This proves that cysteine does not play much of a role in CPC production and does not stimulate CPC biosynthesis to a greater extent.