Bio surfactants may be involved in pathogenesis

 

A variety of methods for the screening of biosurfactant producing microbes has been developed and successfully applied. Since the 1970th there have been various trials in this field. These screenings have mostly been limited to a manageable number of samples. In recent years automation and miniaturization have led to the development of high throughput methods for screening of biosurfactant producing strains. A broad application of such methods could eventually lead to the desired upsurge of new commercially interesting strains.

 

An efficient screening strategy is the key to success in isolating new and interesting microbes or their variants, because a large number of strains needs to be characterized. A complete strategy for screening of new biosurfactants or production strains consists of three steps: sampling, isolation of strains and investigation of strains. Theses steps will be addressed in the next paragraphs. Bioinformatical approaches like homology search are not included herein.