What bioprocessing makes

Bioprocessing makes a remarkable range of products.

Drinks and food. Yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, ferments malted cereals and fruit juices to ethanol: wine and beer are made without distillation; whisky, brandy and rum with it. The product may also be the biomass itself: baker's yeast, or single cell protein for food and feed.

Antibiotics. After penicillin (now made by Penicillium chrysogenum), many other antibiotics were purified from microbes.

Amino acids and organic acids. Mutant strains of Corynebacterium glutamicum make glutamic acid (for flavour, as monosodium glutamate) and lysine (a feed supplement). Organic acids:

Enzymes. Lipases in detergents; pectinases and proteases to clear bottled juices; proteases also in leather processing.

Medicines. Streptokinase, from Streptococcus, a 'clot buster' after a heart attack; cyclosporin A, from Trichoderma polysporum, which suppresses the immune system after transplants; statins, from Monascus purpureus, which lower cholesterol. Recombinant human insulin is made on a large scale from cloned genes.

Vitamins. Vitamin B₁₂ from bacteria such as Propionibacterium freudenreichii and Pseudomonas denitrificans; riboflavin (B₂) mainly from the fungus Ashbya gossypii.

Vaccines. The toxin of Corynebacterium diphtheriae is made in culture and turned into a harmless toxoid for the diphtheria vaccine; influenza virus is grown in mammalian cells.

Plant cell cultures make valuable chemicals too: the dye-drug shikonin from Lithospermum erythrorhizon (the first commercial product of plant cell culture), berberine from Coptis japonica, ginseng saponins from Panax ginseng, and the anticancer drug taxol from Taxus brevifolia.