Culture Conditions for Glutathione Maximum Production by Saccharomyces cerevisiae FF-8 in Bioreactor

As glutathione is now widely used in medicine, functional health food and cosmetic industry, the commercial demand for glutathione has been expending. We have previously reported that Saccharomyces cerevisiae FF-8, an intracellular glutathione producing yeast strain, was isolated from Korean traditional rice wine. Glutathione production by FF-8 strain was 90 mg/l from basal YM medium in flask-scale fermentation, but that in optimal YM medium increased 2.27-fold to 204 ㎎/l. As large scale fermentation is generally applied to achieve more efficient production of bioactive components, this study was also tried to optimization of fermentation parameters to enhance the glutathione production using S. cerevisiae FF-8 in bioreactor process. The highest cell growth and glutathione concentrations of S. cerevisiae FF-8 in 7 l fermenter were observed to be the culture conditions containing culture temperature 30℃, adjusted initial pH 6.0, agitation speed 200 rpm, and aeration rate 2.0 vvm. The maximum glutathione production by FF-8 was cultured under the inner pressure 0.8 kgf/㎠ in a 100 l bioreactor and it was 255.8 ㎎/l. The investigation of significant parameters for improving the glutathione production could be very useful in optimizing processes.