Líneas de investigación

The use of food micro-organisms (mainly lactic bacteria, raising agents and fungus), whether incorporated within the food fermentation process or whether as producers of ingredients, can provide different technological or functional characteristics to foods that, in many cases, can contribute to a cleaner label (“cleanlabel”) of those foods.
At CNTA we maintain and continuously introduce new strains to our collection of lactic bacteria, yeasts and isolated fungus from different sources, mainly food sources, which are able to provide different nutritional and technological functionalities (anti-fungal, texturing, antibacterial, antioxidant, etc.) via metabolic control.
The development of methodologies for the metabolic characterisation of these strains based on the application of biochemical and molecular techniques, enables us to advance in the detection of new functionalities and applications, both in food and in industrial microbiology.
This way, at CNTA we work on developing knowledge about the metabolic routes and the potential of micro-organisms as producers of molecules of nutritional interest (for example, vitamins) or technological interest (for example, organic acids, bacteriocins, carotenoids).
Optimising the fermentation processes is another branch of research that allows us to develop methodologies to improve performance and directed metabolism throughout the microbial growth.

Capacidades

• Pilot scale fermenter 50L
• Experimental fermenters (2-7 L).
• Anaerobic incubation cabin.
• DHPLC Transgenomic System with fraction collector for DNA analysis (SNPs, etc.)
• Cell culture system.
• Phase-contrast microscope with epifluorescence lamp.
• Deep freezers (-80C)
• Microbiology Laboratory
• Molecular Biology Laboratory