Abstract: The carotenoids are a group of important natural and liposoluble pigments foung in plants, animals and microorganisms, displaying yellow, red and orange color. Commercially, carotenoids have been employed like colorants to food and cosmetics and like nutritional supplement with a global market of $1.8 billion by 2019 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.9%. Lycopene is a carotenoid found in tomato, watermelon, guava and papaya. It has roused considerable interest due to its beneficial effect on human health, e.g. cancer and tumor prevention, cardiovascular protection, antiproliferative and antioxidant activities. Due to these properties, alternatives for its obtenition has been developed. The microbial production of lycopene is a viable alterative, however, the extraction and specific accumulation of lycopene must be studied. In the present study various operationals factors in the carotenoids production by Rhodotorula glutinis P4M422 were evaluated; such as pH, inoculum size, light, carbon and nitrogen source concentration, time and temperature. Plackett Burman design was realized and we found that the carbon and nitrogen concentration and temperature are factors with significativ effect in the production. R. glutinis is a yeast producer of carotenoid and the kind of production is intracellular via, therefore, the study of methods for cell distruption and the evaluation of metabolic inducer to lycopene specific production were realized in this study. The addition of 2-isopropyimidazole at 200 ppm showed the major lycopene production and the inhibition of b-carotene production. On the other hand, the pearl mill in combination with acetone resulted to be the more efficient method for carotenoids extraction. Once the carotenoids were obtained, a biological activity evaluation was performed. The results showed the lycopene have antioxidant activity but do not present antimicrobial activity against the fungal evaluated. The thermogravimetric assay shows that lycopene capsules start their degradation around 180 ºC. the results obtained shown that the lycopene can be employed in food industires due to its antioxidant activity and stability.

Thesis PhD Ayerim Hernández