The potential use of Zymomonas mobilis for the food industry

Abstract

Zymomonas mobilis is a gram-negative facultative anaerobic spore, which is generally recognized as a safe. As a promising ethanologenic organism for large-scale bio-ethanol production, Z. mobilis has also shown a good application prospect in food processing and food additive synthesis for its unique physiological characteristics and excellent industrial characteristics. It not only has obvious advantages in food processing and becomes the biorefinery chassis cell for food additives, but also has a certain healthcare effect on human health. Until to now, most of the research is still in theory and laboratory scale, and further research is also needed to achieve industrial production. This review summarized the physiological characteristics and advantages of Z. mobilis in food industry for the first time and further expounds its research status in food industry from three aspects of food additive synthesis, fermentation applications, and prebiotic efficacy, it will provide a theoretical basis for its development and applications in food industry. This review also discussed the shortcomings of its practical applications in the current food industry, and explored other ways to broaden the applications of Z. mobilis in the food industry, to promote its applications in food processing.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Potential applications of Zymomonas mobilis in food industry summarized for the first time.

• Research status of Z. mobilis in food additive synthesis, fermentation applications, and probiotics are discussed in details.

• Future research perspectives of Z. mobilis in food industry further proposed.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Bio-ethanol
• fermentation
• probiotics
• food additives
• Zymomonas mobilis

Authors’ contributions

Lu Liu: Data curation; investigation; visualization; writing—original draft, review, and editing. Jian-Ting Li: Data curation; investigation; visualization; writing section 3.8 and 3.9. Sheng-Hao Li: Data curation; investigation; visualization, writing section 3.10 and 3.11. Lin-Pei Liu: Data curation; investigation. Bo Wu, Yan-Wei Wang, Shi-hui Yang, Cheng-Han Chen, and Fu-Rong Tan: review, and editing. Mingxiong He: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; supervision; writing—review and editing.

Disclosure statement

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (Grant No. 32070036), Agricultural science and Technology Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS-ASTIP-2016-BIOMA), and the Elite Program and Basic Research Program of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS).