The Paenibacillus sp bacteria is one of pathogenic bacteria that caused American foulbrood in honeybees. Many studies reported the genus of the bacteria has potential to cause chronic kidney disease, sickle cell disease, premature birth, Whipple’s disease, hydrocephalus, skin cancer, chronic interstitial nephropathy, and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. However, this genus of bacteria actually can be used to another profitable work which is producing xylanase.
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| Wood comprises lignocellulose which can be converted into Xylanase (image is downloaded from www.cleantechloops.com) |
Although this genus of bacteria is possible to cause human disease, apparently the pathogenic properties can be transformed into something beneficial. Paenibacillus sp. XJ18 was utilized to produce xylanase compound by growing it into lignocellulose media (Kurrata'ayun, Yopi, & Meryandini, 2015). This experiment could be conducted as the Paenibacillus sp.XJ18 consume lignocellulose while growing and it produced the xylene.
The process of transforming Paenibacillus sp in producing Xylanase
The media to growth the Paenibacillus using by the authors of the referenced paper was lignocellulose. This chemical compound is a waste in nature that is produced by the agroforestry activity. It is bounded with another lignohemicellulose compounds which are cellulose and hemi-cellulose. Therefore, chemically speaking, the structure of lignocellulose consists sugar that is formed in non-degradable form and almost half of it is Xylan.On the other hand, Xylan is a complex chemical compound which is structuraly derived-carbon atoms within it. Xylanase can be produced throughout the complex breakdown of the hemicellulose itself (Wikipedia.org, 2017). In wood-plant trees, lingo-hemi-cellulose compounds are in vast quantity. But, Xylanase is attractive because of it is categorized as low calories sugar from the breakdown chains, and also it can be used as bleaching in pulp paper whitening.
The scientists used the Paenibacillus sp. XJ18 because of its xylanatic index value. The incubation and isolation process utilized the corncob from national park in Jambi because the corncob has the highest xylan content (Yang, et al., 2009). The bacteria consume the corncob anaerobically and the metabolism process produces fermented material. To obtain the Xylan from fermented material, the scientists extracted by alkali method obtaining around 10.82 percent of Xylan from 2,500 g of corncob powder.
Producing Xylan from biotechnology
It is similar in producing the bio-material particularly for bioenergy and biogas, the fermentation that requires bacteria becomes promising method. The advantages of this method is there is no required energy such as heat or electricity. We only need the media which can be consumed by the bacteria to growth and creating colonies. However, this production method can be considered as biohazard since bacteria can become threat for human health.
References
[1] Grady, E. N., MacDonald, J., Liu, L., Richman, A., & Yuan, Z.-C. (2016). Current knowledge and perspectives of Paenibacillus: A Review. Microbial Cell Factories, 203.
[2] Kurrata'ayun, Yopi, & Meryandini, A. (2015). Characterization of Xylanase activity produced by Paenibacillus sp. XJ18 from TNBD Jambi, Indonesia. Hayati Journal of Biosciences, 20-26.
[3] Wikipedia.org. (2017, July 28). Xylanase. Retrieved from Wikipedia.org: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylanase
[4] Yang, W., AJapur, V., Krishnamurthy, K., Feng, H., Yang, R., & Rababah, T. (2009). Expedited extraction of xylan from corncob by power ultrasound. International Journal of Agricultural Biology Engineering, 76-83.