Biotechnology in the production of pharmaceutical industry ingredients: Amino acids

Amino acids play an important role in human nutrition and health maintenance. Nowadays amino acids are used as animal feed additives, flavor enhancers, ingredients in cosmetic and pharmaceutical products and as specialty nutrients in the medical field, and the production capacity requirements are constantly increasing. This paper reviews the manufacturing methods for the production of some amino acids used in the pharmaceutical industry and outlines the main achievements of biotechnology in this field. It also summarizes the weaknesses and strengths of the biotechnological methods used for the industrial production of the studied amino acids. Literature search was done through MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus Database, Web of Knowledge search as well as an Internet-based search with predefined keywords. The present mini review is based on a total of 66 publications. Out of 15 amino acids included in our study, 14 are routinely manufactured applying biotechnology methods mostly from specially developed mutants of C. glutamicum or E. coli. Apart from the fact that some of the amino acids cannot be produced cost efficiently via microbiological methods, biotechnology plays a significant role in the production of proteinogenic amino acids and research is being conducted to improve the applied methods by modification of culture conditions, mutation, recombinant DNA technology etc. Biotechnol. & Biotechnol. Eq. 2013, 27(2), 3620-3626