Dr. Cheng's Lab Since 2011
Our lab does not discriminate against students on the basis of political affiliation, gender, ethnicity, age and religion or any other basis protected by law.
FST-Lab 213
Submerged fermentation of medical mushroom
G. formosanum is an endemic species of Lingzhi in Taiwan. We devote to optimize the bioactive metabolites production and evaluate its bioactive function.
(1) Potential skin lightening ingredients from
G. formosanum are screened using zebrafish embryo phenotype-based model. Moreover, the skin lightening mechanism will be evaluated by molecular biology techniques.
(2) To solve the low productivity of metabolites in industrial scale bioreactor, the novel bioreactor with high productivity and low cost is designed by using bi-strategy pH control or immobilization cultivation approach.
(3) Response surface methodology (RSM), a statistical technique, is employed to optimize the yield of bioactive metabolites instead of traditional one-factor-at-a-time method.
(4) To improve human health and welfare, immune-modulation and liver protection activities of
G. formosanum will be investigated for functional food development.
New strain development and alcoholic beverages
Molecular biology methods have tremendous value not only in the investigation of basic scientific questions, but also in application to a wide variety of problems affecting the overall human welfare. The genetically modified strain usually exhibits higher production efficiency and even results in higher purity of target product. Accordingly, I would like to employ my knowledge of molecular biology and biochemistry to focus on industrial strain modification which can exhibit higher conversion rate toward raw material and/or higher tolerance to product inhibition. Mutant strains or new strains can also be obtained through different strategies. Currently, we are working on new yeast strains screening for making alcoholic beverages. Yeasts with special aroma will be our targets.
Lactic acid bacteria and microbiota
Lactic acid bacteria can as antidiabetic agents, immune system modulation agents, cholesterol-reducing agents, and anticancer agents. In recent years, lactic acid bacteria can improve infant diarrhea in clinical , but the underlying mechanism has not been clarified. Our laboratory will be separated and purified the specific lactic acid products, and treated with intestinal cells containing epithelial cells, neural cells, and immune cells to investigate the improvement of infant diarrhea. The major probiotics (bacteria) in human GI will also be LAB since they are anaerobics.
Development of senior functional food
Senior population in Taiwan increases a lot in recent years. Therefore, suitable functional food for those "silver" groups has drawn much attention. We are trying to develop novel senior functional food with high nutrition value and bio-availability for those respected population.
Design of biomaterials
Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a type of cellulose produced from microorganism, which possesses distinctive nano-scale network structure, higher crystallinity, well mechanical strength, high water-content ability and excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability as well.
In our lab, we are focus on
(1)bioreactor design: A rotating disk bioreactor with plastic composite support (PCS) as the solid support was evaluated for BC production.
(2)Strain selection: A BC producing strain isolated from fermented fruit juice was identified as Komagataeibacter intermedius (K. intermedius) FST213-1 by 16s rDNA sequencing analysis and biochemical characteristics test.
(3) Wound dressing application.
Cell/enzyme immobilization
we anchored cells/enzymes on the solid support through covalent binding or other chemical surface modification. The utilization of some instruments, such as ESCA, SEM, and HPLC, was performed to verify the successful enzyme immobilization and target molecules analysis. Our result demonstrated that the preparation of aglycone-rich black soymilk has been achieved by β-glucosidase immobilized system. Moreover, the establishment of lactase immobilized system is an on-going project for delactatic process of dairy products. On the other hand, some food wastes, such as spent coffee grounds, tea leaves, and shrimp shells, were reused as enzyme carriers for further catalytic applications.