A Cost Effective Fermentative Production of Glutathione by Saccharomyces cerevisiae with Cane Molasses and Glycerol

This work aimed to evaluate the effect of sugar cane molasses and glycerol on glutathione (GSH) fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae ATCC 7754 in flask culture using response surface methodology. Under optimized conditions (80 g/L of molasses and 60 g/L of glycerol), the highest GSH and biomass concentration achieved were 119.6 mg/L and 25.3 g/L, respectively. Further studies done in 5 L bioreactor resulted 241.3 mg/L GSH after 96 h in batch fermentation without amino acids addition and the concentration of biomass was 12.1 g/L. In batch fermentation with the addition of the three amino acids (4 mM cysteine, glycine and glutamic acid at 32 h), biomass reached to 25 g/L and GSH, 236.1 mg/L at 96 h of fermentation. The strategy of precursor amino acids addition is a key aspect in increasing the synthesis of GSH.