Production of γ-Aminobutyric Acid by Lactobacillus brevis 340G Isolated from Kimchi and Its Application to Skim Milk

Myung-Ji Seo¹, Ji-Yeon Lee², Young-Do Nam², So-Young Lee², So-Lim Park², Sung-Hun Yi², Mi-Hwa Lee², Seong Woon Roh³, Hak-Jong Choi⁴, Seong-Il Lim²^,^*

¹Division of Bioengineering, Incheon National University

²Fermentation and Functionality Research Group, Korea Food Research Institute

³Jeju Center and Division of Life Science, Korea Basic Science Institute

⁴Emerging Technology Research Group, World Institute of Kimchi

^*Corresponding author: Seong-Il Lim, Fermentation and Functionality Research Group, Korea Food Research Institute, Sungnam 463-746, Korea, Tel: +82-31-780-9277; Fax: +82-31-709-9876, E-mail : silim@kfri.re.kr

ⓒ Copyright 2013 Korean Society for Food Engineering. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Aug 26, 2013; Revised: Oct 14, 2013; Accepted: Nov 13, 2013

Published Online: Nov 30, 2013

Abatract

The Lactobacillus brevis 340G strain isolated from traditional Korean fermented food (kimchi) produced 15.50 mM of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) after 48 h of cultivation in MRS media containing 1% L-monosodium glutamate (MSG). The culture conditions of Lb. brevis 340G were optimized for GABA production. Lb. brevis 340G was cultivated at 30°C in optimized MRS media containing 3% sucrose and 2% yeast extract with 3% MSG, resulting in maximum GABA production (68.77 mM) after 54 h of cultivation. Skim milk fermented with Lb. brevis 340G produced 4.64 mM of GABA in the presence of 1% MSG. These results suggest that Lb. brevis 340G could be used as a starter for functional fermented foods and skim milk fermented with Lb. brevis 340G could be further developed to become functional dairy food fortified with GABA.

Keywords: γ-aminobutyric acid; kimchi; Lactobacillus brevis; skim milk