Yield improvement of exopolysaccharides by screening of the Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC and optimization of the fermentation and extraction conditions

Exopolysacharides (EPS) produced by Lactobacillus acidophilus play an important role in food processing with its well-recognized antioxidant activity. In this study, a L. acidophilus mutant strain with high-yielding EPS (2.92±0.05 g/L) was screened by chemical mutation (0.2 % diethyl sulfate). Plackett-Burman (PB) design and response surface methodology (RSM) were applied to optimize the EPS fermentation parameters and central composite design (CCD) was used to optimize the EPS extraction parameters. A strain with high-yielding EPS was screened. It was revealed that three parameters (Tween 80, dipotassium hydrogen phosphate and trisodium citrate) had significant influence (P < 0.05) on the EPS yield. The optimal culture conditions for EPS production were: Tween 80 0.6 mL, dipotassium hydrogen phosphate 3.6 g and trisodium citrate 4.1 g (with culture volume of 1 L). In these conditions, the maximum EPS yield was 3.96±0.08 g/L. The optimal extraction conditions analyzed by CCD were: alcohol concentration 70 %, the ratio of material to liquid (M/L ratio) 1:3.6 and the extraction time 31 h. In these conditions, the maximum EPS extraction yield was 1.48±0.23 g/L. It was confirmed by the verification experiments that the EPS yield from L. acidophilus mutant strains reached 5.12±0.73 g/L under the optimized fermentation and extraction conditions, which was 3.8 times higher than that of the control (1.05±0.06 g/L). The results indicated that the strain screening with high-yielding EPS was successful and the optimized fermentation and extraction conditions significantly enhanced EPS yield. It was efficient and industrially promising.