Studies of lycopene from photosynthetic bacteria

Lycopene is a kind of carotenoids and too expensive. It has manifold function of physiology and is mainly extracted from the fruits of tomatoes. Some photosynthetic bacteria were found to produce lycopene. It shows possibility that low cost lycopene could be produced by microbial fermentation. This work studied the lycopene production of photosynthetic bacteria. 'The conditions were optimized for the growth of strain 7-land lycopene production by orthogonal designs method. The RCVBN medium was modified as: 0.4% Lactate was used as carbon source, 0.05% Glutamine as nitrogen source, lOppmofMg2+ and0.1% yeast extract. The cell numbers of strain 7-1 reached 5.08×1010/ml after 72 h cultivation, and the content of lycopene was improved to 398.7 mg/100 g (dry weight).