Better Understanding of Fermentations via Fatty Acid Analysis

Join the Department of Chemistry for this guest lecture from Joe Lustig (MS ACHM '21), who now works for Valent BioSciences.

Increased public scrutiny of agrochemicals (and demand for organic produce) has led many growers to abandon conventional agrochemicals in favor of natural products which provide the same benefits with minimal environmental impact. However, production of these products often
involves living organisms which complicate the design process. Researchers can’t simply piece together established synthetic reactions; biological pathways must be understood and monitored.

This talk presents the development and validation of an analytical method intended to monitor natural product fermentations which use glycerides as their primary carbon source. After liquid-liquid extraction of the fermentation broth and derivatization of fatty acids, samples were analyzed by GC-MS to quantify free fatty acids and glyceryl fatty acids. The resulting data allows researchers to see how glyceride consumption relates to the yield of the desired natural products.