The Effect of Caffeine Concentration on Bacterial Cellulose Production using Bacteria and Yeast Isolates from Kombucha's Culture in Mollasses Media

Abstract

The most dominant biopolymer in the earth is cellulose, which mostly found in plants. On the other hand, bacteria have the ability to produced microbial cellulose called bacterial cellulose (BC). The BC does not contain any hemicellulose or lignin, which have higher purity compared to the plant cellulose. The production of BC has been studied, which shows that caffeine plays a role in the BC production. The caffeine believed as an activator for the BC synthase (BCS), but there is still lack knowledge regarding the optimum concentration of caffeine that can promote the highest BC yield production. This study aims to verify the effect of caffeine and find the best concentration of caffeine on the BC yield production. The methodology mainly separated into two parts; the BC production using adapted kombucha mixed-culture and the BC production using isolated culture. The K. intermedius strain HWW101 and B. bruxellensis isolate YKR-3 are isolated from adapted kombucha culture are used in this study. It will begin with the inoculum preparation following with the fermentation setup and analysis. This study found that caffeine has an impact on the BC yield, but it does have an optimum caffeine concentration. The 500 mg/L caffeine is better compared to the others since the BC yield is the highest, and it did not interrupt the growth of the microbes. The interaction between K. intermedius strain HWW101 and B. bruxellensis isolate YKR-3 are not showing a symbiotic interaction.