Edinburgh Napier University

  Gut Feelings main commercial product is Kombucha, a fermented tea produced by natural microbial fermentation and assumed to contain a variety of microbes that link to health benefits. It is produced using a two-stage process in which a SCOBY (a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) ferments sweetened tea for 1-3 weeks, followed by a second stage in which the liquid is bottled, matured and sold. The company currently only produces 684 litres Kombucha per month and this is severely limiting sales and company expansion. Consequently, Gut Feelings wishes to scale up the fermentation process to produce 2000 litres per month. However, such process scale-up requires careful microbiological analysis to ensure that the final product contains high amounts of health promoting microbial species and reaches an acceptable quality.
This project will use state-of-the-art DNA-sequencing technology (next-generation DNA Illumina sequencing, NGS) to provide detailed analysis of the bacterial and fungal community present enabling the impact and optimisation of process scale-up to be achieved. NGS will be coupled with recovery and culturing of microorganisms to enumerate and screen for potentially probiotic (health-promoting) organisms. All of the above requires a combination of expertise (including in data interpretation) and knowledge provided by the University.