Production, recovery and purification of bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria

Bacteriocins produced by lactic acid bacteria are a heterogeneous group of peptide inhibitors which include lantibiotics (class I, e.g. nisin), small heat-stable peptides (class II, e.g. pediocin AcH/PA1) and large heat-labile proteins (class III, e.g. helveticin J). Many bacteriocins belonging to the first two groups can be successfully used to inhibit undesirable microorganisms in foods, but only nisin is produced industrially and is licensed for use as a food preservative in a partially purified form. This review focuses on the production and purification of class I and class II bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria. Bacteriocin production is growth associated but the yield of bacteriocin per unit biomass is affected by several factors, including the producing strain, media (carbohydrate and nitrogen sources, cations, etc.) and fermentation conditions (pH, temperature, agitation, aeration and dilution rate in continuous fermentations). Continuous fermentation processes with cell recycle or immobilized cells can result in a dramatic improvement in productivity over batch fermentations. Several simple recovery processes, based on adsorbing bacteriocin on resins or silica compounds, have been developed and can be used to build integrated production processes. Received: 29 December 1998 / Received revision: 23 April 1999 / Accepted: 23 April 1999