ABSTRACT
Microbial cellulose (MC) is a polysaccharide excreted extracellularly by certain bacteria. The species Gluconacetobacter xylinus (or Acetobacter xylinum as formerly known) is the most extensively studied cellulose-producing bacteria (Czaja et al., 2006). MC exhibits some unique features such as impressive mechanical strength, crystallinity (Blaker et al., 2010), water-holding capacity, purity, and in situ moldability, which are superior to those of plant cellulose (Klemm et al., 2001). MC presents an ultrane nanobril network (Wan et al., 2006). These characteristics render MC, which has been traditionally used in food industry and recently in the production of reinforced paper, valuable for biomedical applications (Shah et al., 2013).
