ABSTRACT
Markus M. Müller, Barbara Hörmann, Christoph Syldatk, and Rudolf Hausmann Institute of Process Engineering and Life Sciences, Section II, Technical Biology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany markus.mueller2@kit.edu, markus.mueller@tebi.uni-karlsruhe.de
1 INTRODUCTION16.In 1949 Jarvis and Johnson reported an anionic glycolipid with a molecular weight of 650 g/mol produced by three different strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They showed that this amphiphilic glyco-lipid was constituted of a hydrophilic head group with two sugar moi-eties, namely, l-rhamnose, and two β-hydroxydecanoic acid residues, forming the hydrophobic tail of the molecule. Today, glycolipids com-posed of l-rhamnose and β-hydroxyalkanoic acid residues are gener-ally termed rhamnolipids. Rhamnolipids belong to the limited group of biosurfactants commercially available. Although over 60 years have passed since Jarvis and Johnson described the first rhamnolipid, economic obstacles for rhamnolipid production, like low productivity, comparatively expensive raw material, and relative high costs for downstream processing, prevented them from being applied in bulk applications. Nevertheless, they are nonpolluting, sustainable, and show excellent physicochemical properties, which makes them inter-esting for cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and detergent manufacturers.
