Cellulose is the main component of plant cell wall. Some bacteria produce cellulose (called biocellulose or bacterial cellulose). Plant cellulose and bacterial cellulose have the same chemical structure (Fig.2.1), but different chemical and physical properties (Lin et al., 2016). The molecular formula of bacterial cellulose (C6H10O5)n is the same as that of plant cellulose, but their chemical and physical features are different. Biocellulose is preferred over the plant cellulose as it can be obtained in higher purity and exhibits a higher degree of polymerization and crystallinity index. It also has water holding capacity and higher tensile strength than that of plant cellulose, making it more suitable raw material for producing high fidelity acoustic speakers, high quality paper and dessert foods (Enas et al. (2015; Kwak et al., 2015). Fig.2.2 shows an electron microscopic image of bacterial cellulose and plant cellulose. Biocellulose is produced by an acetic acid-producing bacterium, Gluconacetobacter xylinus (Acetobacter xylinum). The diameter of bacterial cellulose is about 1/100 of that of plant cellulose and Young's modulus of bacterial cellulose is almost equivalent to that of aluminum. Therefore, …show more content…
Cellulose is can also produced by the Gram-positive bacterium Sarcina ventriculi, yielding about 15 % of the total dry cell mass (Bellamy, 1974). The most effective producers of cellulose are Acetobacterhansenii (Park et al., 2003), A. xylinum (Junaidi et al., 2012; Hungund et al., 2013),). A. xylinum has been applied as model bacteria for applied and basic studies on cellulose production because it can produced relatively high levels of polymer from a wide range of carbon and nitrogen sources (Bielecki, et al.,