Girish B Mahajan¹* and Dipali Rahul Phatak²

¹HiMedia Laboratories Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, India
²Jogeshwari Education Society, Mumbai, India

*Corresponding Author: Girish B Mahajan, HiMedia Laboratories Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, India.

Received: May 15, 2021; Published: June 04, 2021

Citation: Girish B Mahajan and Dipali Rahul Phatak. “Sticky Bacteria: The Mini-Factories of Gums". Acta Scientific Microbiology 4.7 (2021): 08-10.

Abstract

  Microbial polysaccharides or gums are classified as, exocellular, cell wall, and intercellular. Within the cell, they play a unique role in controlling energy resources, overcoming water stress, protective function, etc. However, due to their unique gelling and viscosity properties and neutral activities, they find wide applications in our day-to-day life. Several of today's foods and pharmaceuticals require unique texturization, viscosity, flavor releaser, appearance, and water-control properties. These polysaccharides are incorporated into foods and pharma products as thickeners, gelling agents, and agents to control ice crystal formation in frozen foods. Despite the great diversity of molecular structures, only a few microbial gums have been commercially developed. In the quest for new polysaccharides with better qualities for the above applications, the present research is bent towards exploiting new sources of polysaccharides especially from marine extremophilic and xerophytic microorganisms.

Keywords: Bacteria; Gums; Polymers

Copyright: © 2021 Girish B Mahajan and Dipali Rahul Phatak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.