Nature and White Biotechnology

Nature, Nature, Nature...! People talk a lot about nature and the environment, but it's sad; that only talking won't help. We want big houses to live in but as consequence trees are being cut down. Mother nature is giving her gifts to humans from day one. Cotton, wool, silk....for your fabrics, your fashionable clothes and wood for building house, furniture. Also, plants are destroyed, especially flowers are squeezed to dye you pretty looking stylish clothes, bedsheets, decorative items.... and the list goes on. Chemists came into picture and natural dye was replaced with artificial dye and soon plastic or polymers replaced wood. Things were still not going well. Plastic was not biodegradable and caused pollution. It started accumulating in oceans on land and as a side effect fishes (also other land animals) were suffering. All because of careless humans. Artificial dye has a lot of chemicals as lot of acids and base goes into its manufacturing process. So, as a solution to these problems people thought of using microbes, i.e., simple bacteria, viruses or fungi to produce natural enzymes and get biodegradable products.

There are different colors of biotechnology... Red (Medicine and human health), white (Industrial product, using enzymes to reduce pollution), Green (for improving agricultural products), Yellow (for nutrition and food), Blue (marine well being), Grey (environment), Brown (for desert organisms and environment), violet (for law, ethics and philosophy), Gold (information technology, bioinformatics), Dark (bioterrorism, warfare).

Different Aspergillus (fungus) species
Dr. David Midgley University of Sydney, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons

Here, I am focusing on white biotechnology. Its mainly an European term for industrial biotechnology. The usage of living cells like yeast, molds, bacteria to produce enzymes or products with less waste and harmful substance. The products will be biodegradable and their production consumes less energy. For quite a long time, bacterial compounds have been utilized generally in food producing and as major ingredients in washing powders to decrease the measure of counterfeit surfactants. Transgenic Escherichia coli are utilized to deliver human insulin in large scale fermenters. Furthermore, the first designed chemical, utilized in cleansers to separate fat, was presented as ahead of schedule as 1988. Utilizing elective substrates and fuel sources, white biotechnology is as of now carrying numerous developments to the synthetic, material, food, bundling and medical care enterprises. It is nothing unexpected then that scholastics, industry and strategy creators are progressively inspired by this new innovation, its economy and its commitments to a sound climate, which could make it a trustworthy technique for sustainable development.

Bioreactors used for enzyme production. Image source

There is an endless list of microbial enzymes which are of great use in industries. For example, In Dairy industry, Acid proteinase (taken from Aspergillus sp.) and Neutral proteinase (Bacillus subtilis, A. oryzae) are used for Milk coagulation and faster cheese ripening respectively. In baking industry Amylase enzyme (from Aspergillus sp., Bacillus sp.,) is used for Flour adjustment, Lipase (Aspergillus niger) is used for Dough stability and Conditioning etc. For beverage production cellulase (from Aspergillus niger, Trichoderma atriviridae) is used for fruit liquefication. The list is long and the areas where these biological enzymes are used include, Animal feed, pulp and paper industry, polymer, deterg
ent, Leather, cosmetics, organic synthesis, waste management etc. 

For anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, skin disease treatment and for other such therapeutic needs many microbial enzyme are used. For example, Collagenase derived from Clostridium perfringens, Uricase from Aspergillus flavus.

Image source

By 2025 the white biotechnology global enzyme market is predicted to be valued at USD 12,047.1 million. Gluten free baked products can be obtained by using such biological enzymes (Transglutaminase) for the people living in USA, as they consume lot of baked products in their diet. North America is expected to show rising growth in industries for beverages, Biofuel etc. There is a lot of competition among companies to produce best and cheap bio-based enzymes/products. "The global white biotechnology enzymes market is steadily growing, and estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.9% in during the forecast period 2019-2025."

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotechnology#Industrial
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991975/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326365/
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0734975015300306#:~:text=White%20biotechnology%20is%20a%20term,drivers%20for%20the%20growing%20bioeconomyhttps://explorebiotech.com/about-white-biotechnology/

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