Culture Media Formulation and Growth Conditions for Biosurfactants Production by Bacteria

At present, several industrial cities are showing a lot of pollution problems due to xenobiotics in soil. Most of them are recalcitrant to the environment dueto their low 1-octanol-water partitioning coefficient (hydrophobic organic contaminant),in addition they are toxic to the biota. Nowadays, the technique that is most compatible with the environment is bioremediation, which is used to remove these kinds of toxics from different matrixes. For this reason, a number of microorganisms where selected not only because they produce changes in the molecular structures of the toxics (through their enzymatic activity), but also because of the extra and intra cellular surface active compounds (biosurfactants)that they generate, containing tensoactive properties which are very similar to synthetic surfactants, that are involve in micelles the toxic from the soil, improve their desorption or their biodegradation by the same or by other microorganisms, and in this case the most studied where bacterial microorganisms. In order to induce the production of these substances in microorganisms, vast research had to previously be done; the aim of this work was to generate an overview of some of these important research projects, to be able to understand the growth conditions and nutritional requirements of the different microorganisms that produce biosurfactants as well as to outline the possibility of using them in the bioremediation process.