During fermentation, microorganisms such as yeasts, molds, and bacteria are mixed with natural products which they use as food. In the case of wine-making, for example, yeasts live on the sugars found in some type of fruit juice, most commonly, grape juice. They digest those sugars and produce two new products, alcohol and
carbon dioxide.
The alcoholic beverages produced by this process have been, for better or worse, a mainstay of human civilization for untold centuries. In breadmaking, the products of fermentation are responsible for the wonderful odor (the alcohol) and texture (the carbon dioxide) of freshly-baked bread. Cheese and yogurt are two other products formed when microorganisms act on a natural product, in this case milk—changing its color, odor, texture, and taste.
Biotechnology has long been used in a variety of industrial processes also. As early as the seventeenth century, bacteria were used to remove copper from its ores. Around 1910, scientists found that bacteria could be used to decompose organic matter in sewage, thus providing a mechanism for dealing efficiently with such materials in solid waste. A few years later, a way was found to use microorganisms to produce glycerol synthetically. That technique soon became very important commercially, since glycerol is used in the manufacture of explosives and World War I was about to begin.
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