Production of microbial pepton from sheep wool hydrolisate

Peptones or protein hydrolysates are mainly used as organic nitrogen sources in microbial culture media. They are accepted as one of the most expensive cultivation substrates. The purposes of the recent work were to generate the microbial peptone from sheep wool via a newly designed chemical method and to test the feasibility of the obtained peptone as a growth substrate for some fungi and bacteria having industrial and/or biotechnologically important importance. RESULTS: The preparation of wool peptone (WP) was performed via alkaline hydrolysis and neutralization steps. KOH (2,5 N) and H3PO4 (85% solution) were used for the hydrolysis and neutralization steps, respectively. The ash analysis indicated that WP possesed high protein (67,8 g /100 g) and ash (29,2 g/100 g) levels. The major amino acid in WP was glutamic acid (8175 mg/100 g). WP was shown to posses relatively high amount of cystine. WP concentrations of 5 and 6 g/L were determined as optimal for the fungi and bacteria, respectively. Of the tested bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus showed too weak growth in WP medium. WP was found to provide growth performance at moderate level for three test microorganisms (Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Bacillus subtilis and Penicillium chrysogenum). The highest biomass production (8,17 g/L) for Aspergillus niger was attained with WP. When compared to the other commercial test peptones, second highest biomass production for the test bacterium Escherichia coli was reached in the cultivation medium containing WP. Based on the results from this study, it can be concluded that WP is a promising medium component for some of the tested organisms, particularly A. niger and E. coli. Utilization of wools as peptone source or nutritional component for fungi and bacteria was demonstrated for the first time in the present work. In this study, both development of a new product and method providing economic income to our country and the obtaining of new findings having original value for world literature are aimed.