Team:UCL/Fermentation
'
Why bother going big?
After creating our biobricks and expressed them in bacteria we needed to test two essential assumptions of our project. The first was that our bacteria can survive a shock of pH and oxygen concentration which they would need to go through when traveling through the digestive system.
The other assumption was that we could create the right growth conditions for the bacteria to produce them in large amounts. The latter point would be necessary in order to mass-produce bacteria commercially which is essential for our entrepreneurial effort.
The problem we faced was that we couldn't control these conditions precisely or without great effort, as a normal incubator allows only control of temperature and shaking frequency. How could we overcome these problems?
Using a bioreactor
We were able to successfully test our assumptions on a larger scale than usually possible in research labs by using a 7l bioreactor. This allowed us to simulate the conditions existing in the transition from one gut-compartment into the other, under controlled conditions. Secondly, we could show that a large scale production of our probiotic bacteria is possible.