Microbiology and Fermentations Skills

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In this skills course, you expand and apply the theoretical knowledge on the growth of microbes and cell cultures obtained in the previous years and in the Bioreactors course. You are introduced to the 12 principles of green chemistry and experiment with fermentation as an ideal technique to perform environmentally sustainable chemistry. In order to do so, you learn how to identify, characterise and maintain a microbial culture for fermentation purposes; you gain practice with media preparation, differential staining and microscopy. You perform serial dilutions and learn how to calculate the colony forming units/ml of samples from the plate counts. You apply the Monod equation to calculate the maximum growth rate for a specific microorganism and the minimum amount of substrate needed to achieve it. You also practice extraction of natural products from the bacterial culture, and the purification and characterization of metabolites. As a separate topic, you also experiment how bacteria produce biofilms and how different surfaces can influence biofilm formation.