ABSTRACT
The Bacillus genus is used for production of commercial enzymes and for various industrial products, including nutraceutics. The detailed knowledge of their genome, the ability to form spores and the wide range of substrates they can metabolize are some features justifying their importance in this field. They produce virtually all classes of enzymes, including amylases, xylanases, pullulanases, nattokinases, glucoamylases, lipases, pectinases, mannanases. Such enzymes are used for baking (lowering digestibility and viscoelasticity of starchy materials), in the beverage industry (clarification of juices, generation of sugar rich syrups), dairy industry (reduction of cheese maturation time; generation of aroma compounds), among others. Furthermore, the enzymes and/or products released by Bacillus spp. can find potential use as nutraceutics, such as direct use as prebiotics/functional food (oligosaccharides), tableting excipient for controlled drug release and emulsion stabilizer (modified starch), and direct therapeutic or immunologic effects (nattokinase). These applications and recent developments have received much contribution from molecular biology (driven mutations, use of plasmid insertions, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats [CRISPR]) and the developed technologies and processes have been properly safeguarded (patented) by the major players worldwide. Researching enzymes from Bacillus spp. for nutraceutical production is currently a hot topic, and the trend seems to be set to continue.
