An application of solid-phase extraction (SPE) for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis was developed for the rapid determination of benzoic acid and sorbic acid in Thai rice wine and distillate products. The SPE extraction gave promising results with 95.7+1.7% recovery for benzoic acid standard, and 95.2+2.3% for sorbic acid standard. Mean relative standard deviation (RSD) fo...

Zygosaccharomyces kombuchaensis was recently discovered in the 'tea fungus' used to make fermented tea. Z. kombuchaensis was shown by ribosomal DNA sequencing to be a novel species, and a close relative of Zygosaccharomyces lentus, from which it could not be distinguished by conventional physiological tests. Z. lentus was originally established as a new taxon by growth at 4 degrees C, sensitivi...

Weak organic acids such as sorbic acid are important food preservatives and powerful fungistatic agents. These compounds accumulate in the cytosol and disturb the cellular pH and energy homeostasis. Candida glabrata is in many aspects similar to Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However, with regard to confrontation to sorbic acid, two of the principal response pathways behave differently in C. glabrat...

The weak organic acid sorbic acid is a commonly used food preservative, as it inhibits the growth of bacteria, yeasts, and molds. We have used genome-wide transcriptional profiling of Bacillus subtilis cells during mild sorbic acid stress to reveal the growth-inhibitory activity of this preservative and to identify potential resistance mechanisms. Our analysis demonstrated that sorbic acid-stre...

The ability of two strains of Trichoderma, isolated from food, to produce the Volatile Organic Compounds 1,3-pentadiene and styrene was investigated. One of the strains had been implicated in a case of food spoilage involving the production of both compounds. In vitro in potato dextrose broth, the strains produced both 1,3-pentadiene and styrene within 5 days in the presence of sorbic acid and ...

A simple, rapid, and accurate spectrophotometric flow-injection method was developed for the determination of sorbic acid in wines based on the oxidation of sorbic acid with K2Cr2O7/H2SO4 at 1008C, followed by reaction of the resulting malonaldehyde with thiobarbituric acid, also at 1008C, to give a red product, the absorbance of which is measured at 532 nm. The method requires no prior distill...

Weak organic acids like sorbic and acetic acid are widely used to prevent growth of spoilage organisms such as Bacilli. To identify genes involved in weak acid stress tolerance we screened a transposon mutant library of Bacillus subtilis for sorbic acid sensitivity. Mutants of the rodZ (ymfM) gene were found to be hypersensitive to the lipophilic weak organic acid. RodZ is involved in determini...

The effect of some selected food preservatives on serum cholinesterase was determined. It was found that potassium metabisulphite, methyl parabene and propyl parabene caused a significant increase while sacharine, benzoic acid, salicylic acid, copper carbonate and sorbic acid caused a significant decrease in cholinesterase activity. The behavior of serum cholinesterase activity in response to a...

The conversion of biomass into bulk chemicals provides the potential for multiple environmental and economic benefits. While current research in industrial biotechnology focuses primarily on biocatalysts, a significant opportunity exists when combining biological and chemical catalysis into one process train. This hybrid process approach will potentially produce a wide array of economically via...