Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: MatthewJames on July 16, 2018, 02:04:49 AM
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Say I am fermenting cabbage with a lactobacillus starter culture. There is only 2.8g of sugar in 1 cup of cabbage. The lactobacillus bacteria are programmed to consume sugar as a source of energy right? And the lactobacillus bacteria multiple exponentially via binary fission right? So that 2.8g of sugar will be gone pretty quickly, wont it? So then what? How would the bacteria continue to multiply if they don't have an energy source?
Cabbage and all vegetables are made up of cell walls composed of cellulose and cellulose is a form of sugar, right? Do lactobacillus bacteria have the capabilities to break down cell walls all on their own and use the cellulose as energy?
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Cellulose is a 1,4-linked polymer of glucose, and the linkage has the beta-configuration. An organism would need an enzyme of the correct specificity, but I don't know whether or not lactobacillus has such an enzyme, the common name for which is cellulase.
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Yes, I believe one or more of the bacterial organisms responsible for sauerkraut fermentation can degrade cellulose, which is why sauerkraut is easy to digest (it doesn't give you the ...er... gut problems that, say, eating coleslaw does). Bear in mind that lactobacillus is not the only, or even first, microbe to be involved in cabbage fermentation. The process is also self-limiting, because at certain pH values, the microbes start to die off.