Fermentation, biofermentation: reality vs. wishful thinking

Biofermentation: wishful thinking and advertising

What is “biofermentation”? You will not find the word in a dictionary or in Wikipedia. It’s not used in biochemistry. The term was created by the advertising department of a company making ingredients for the skincare industry (apparently, “bio” sounds great and adds label value to any word). Biofermentation is sold in advertising as a procedure that increases the yield and bioavailability of valuable chemicals present in the extract. Once you know that this is an advertising term and not a scientific one, it makes things easier to understand.   Biofermentation is also one of those terms that the industry uses to hide preservatives and other additives that don’t sound good in an ingredient list (see von Woedtke et al. 1999 and Li et al. 2015).

Disclosure: I also use the term bioferment, it’s in the INCI name of many ingredients used by the industry.

What is fermentation?

Fermentation is a metabolic process that converts sugar to acids, gases, and/or alcohol. It occurs in yeast and bacteria, and also in oxygen-depleted muscle cells, where you get lactic acid fermentation. For yeast and bacteria, fermentation is the way they get energy out of food.  For humans, fermentation is a process that has been used for millennia to preserve foods, changing chemical structure and taste. Bread, wine, beer, bread, and much more are made using fermentation.

We humans can do better than fermentation: using respiration, a process that uses molecular oxygen, we can extract lots more energy from food, taking it all the way to water and carbon dioxide.  This way, we get lots more energy as ATP and more reducing power as NADH. You may also know that when our muscles are working hard and fast, respiration may not be able to match and we end up doing some lactic fermentation.

New developments

In recent years, the term “fermentation” has been also used more broadly to refer to the bulk growth of microorganisms on a growth medium with the aim of producing a specific chemical product. If you choose the right microorganism, the right substrate (food), and conditions, it is possible to obtain almost any valuable chemical. Fermentation in this sense has been helpful to replace animals as sources of chemicals. For example, there is a bacterium capable of making hyaluronic acid in culture, so we do not need to source it from animals products (plants can’t make hyaluronic acid.)

There is a limit to what a biochemist or microbiologist can do. A bacteria will use the enzymes it has to convert sugars or food that are supplied to it into what the bacteria can actually make with the enzymes that bacteria possess. We have been moving away from these limitations by introducing new enzymes into bacteria, using genetic manipulation.

Fermentation at Skin Actives

At present we only make a few products of fermentation but we are widening our capacity and incorporating new substrates and new microorganisms.  We are also introducing new enzymes that will help to increase the bioavailability of useful chemicals to the skin, just as advertising has been promising for decades.

What about the future?

In theory, it is possible to incorporate new metabolic pathways into bacteria. This is a monumental task because it involves incorporating new enzymes into an existing pathway in such a way that it does not disrupt overall metabolism (a.k.a. kills the bacteria!). This is a worthwhile aim, especially when used to solve an environmental problem, like pollution by a chemical that cannot be broken down by natural microorganisms. Introducing pathways capable of degrading environmental contaminants would be a fantastic achievement.

Other advances

Genetic engineered bacteria are used at present to make 1,3 propylene glycol (propanediol.)  And what about the “impossible burger”? It’s now possible to get a non-animal burger that contains protein that tastes like meat. In the future, it may be possible to imitate the texture of animal meat by using bio-engineering, non-animal substrates, and bio-identical, synthetic growth factors. In 1931 Winston Churchill said: “With a greater knowledge of what are called hormones, i.e. the chemical messengers in our blood, it will be possible to control growth. We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” 

References

von Woedtke T, Schlüter B, Pflegel P, Lindequist U, Jülich WD. (1999) Aspects of the antimicrobial efficacy of grapefruit seed extract and its relation to preservative substances contained. Pharmazie, 54:452-6.
Jing Li, Chaytor JL, Findlay B, McMullen LM, Smith, DC, Vederas JC (2015) Identification of Didecyldimethylammonium salts and salicylic acid as antimicrobial compounds in commercial fermented radish kimchi . J. Agric. Food Chem., 63:3053–3058

DISCLAIMER: These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, cure, treat or prevent any disease.