Production, Properties, and Application of Curdlan

Curdlan was produced in high yield by cultures of a newly isolated and improved mutant strain of Alcaligenes faecalis var. myxogenes . Curdlan forms a gel with specific properties and it should be a useful, new polymer not only as a food additive, but also for industrial purposes. I. Findings The history of the discovery of curdlan is interesting. In 1962, Harada and his colleagues made great efforts to obtain microorganisms which could utilize petrochemical materials. They isolated an organism from soil, capable of growing on medium containing 10% ethylene-glycol as the sole carbon source ( 1 ) and named it Alcaligenes faecalis var. myxogenes 10C3 ( 2, 3 ). They found that this organism produced a new β-glucan which contained about 10% succinic acid and named it succinoglucan ( 4, 5 ). The structure of the polysaccharide moiety of succinoglucan ( 6, 7 ) is shown below: →Glcl→4Glcl→3Glcl→3Glcl→6Glcl→4Glcl→3Glcl→3Glcl→4Glcl→3Gall→4Glcl→ During investigations on the production of succinoglucan, one day they