Facultad de Ciencias Químicas
QFB Luis Carlos Mata Gómez
Abstract: Carotenoids are highly unsaturated molecules with many benefits to human health due to high potential as antioxidants. Human and animals cannot synthesize these compounds. Commonly, carotenoids have been extracted from plants and chemically synthesized, but these methods to obtaining them face some disadvantages like low yields, high costs production, seasonal geographic problems (in plants), pollutant processes, and etc. Microbial carotenoids represent an alternative to get over the troubles aforementioned. Also, microbial processes are safety, not pollutant, low cost of production, easy to manipulate and scaled up. Red yeasts of Rhodotorula sp. genus are naturally carotenoid producers and known to grow in agro-industrial wastes. In this work, three Rhodotorula strains were evaluated, where R. glutinis P4M24 showed major potential for carotenoid production.
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