Research papers of the week – November 2, 2021

Daria Ciecholewska-Juśko, Michał Broda, Anna Żywicka, Daniel Styburski, Peter Sobolewski, Krzysztof Gorący, Paweł Migdał, Adam Junka, Karol Fijałkowski

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Ministerial score = 140.0
JIF Impact Factor (2020) = 5.924

In this work, we verified the possibility of valorizing a major waste product of the potato starch industry, potato tuber juice (PJ). We obtained a cost-effective, ecological-friendly microbiological medium that yielded bacterial cellulose (BC) with properties equivalent to those from conventional commercial Hestrin–Schramm medium. The BC yield from the PJ medium (>4 g/L) was comparable, despite the lack of any pre-treatment. Likewise, the macro- and microstructure, physicochemical parameters, and chemical composition showed no significant differences between PJ and control BC. Importantly, the BC obtained from PJ was not cytotoxic against fibroblast cell line L929 in vitro and did not contain any hard-to-remove impurities. The PJ-BC soaked with antiseptic exerted a similar antimicrobial effect against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as to BC obtained in the conventional medium and supplemented with antiseptic. These are very important aspects from an application standpoint, particularly in biomedicine. Therefore, we conclude that using PJ for BC biosynthesis is a path toward significant valorization of an environmentally problematic waste product of the starch industry, but also toward a significant drop in BC production costs, enabling wider application of this biopolymer in biomedicine.

DOI:10.3390/ijms222011235

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