Impiego della tecnica della bioluminescenza nello studio della crescita e della fermentazione di Saccharomyces cerevisiae"

The behavior of microbial growth in a fermentative process was investigated by means of bioluminescenza technique which allows the estimation of ATP in microbial cells. The date were compared with classical methods, which were used to value both the biomass growth (viable cell count) and the utilization of the substrate (consumption of glucose and production of ethanol). The results obtained show the inadequacy of the luminescence as a method to study the fermentative process. The technique in fact doesn't give any information about the metabolic phase of the microbial cells, because it measure all the ATP present, without any differentiation. During fermentation, as in many other biotechnological process, the most important matter is to know the microbial growth phase corresponding to their maximum activity.