Enterocin is a significant broad spectrum peptide antibiotic produced by Enterococcus faecium. Enterocin production by Enterococcus faecium was investigated by Taguchi experimental design. The Taguchi models were used in order to save time and effort required for optimizing the different conditions affecting its production. They were applied to optimize the conditions for enterocin production by the least number of experiments and the least amount of required materials. Seven factors viz., pH, temperature, time of incubation, aeration rate, inoculum size, carbohydrate concentration, and bile salt concentrations, each at three levels were selected and an orthogonal array layout of L27(3) performed. The experiment result indicated that the best incubation conditions were; 48 hours incubation on a nutrient medium at pH 6.5, temperature at 25°C, aeration rate at 0 rpm, inoculum size 20 ml, Bile salt conc. Was 5% and the carbon concentration was 2.0%. all these factors combined led to the best enterocin production by Enterococcus faecium. This optimization of enterocin production by the Taguchi experimental models emphasized some important results about the interaction of the different driving factors leading to the best enterocin production in one experiment.
Keywords: Enterococcus faecium , Enterocin, Optimization, Taguchi design, Antibacterial activity