Isolation of Serratia marcescence: A Guide to Conventional and Molecular CharacterizationIsolation of Serratia marcescence: A Guide to Conventional and Molecular Characterization

Abstract

Colorants play an important role in the food production as it signifies freshness, nutritional value and safety while directly affecting the market value of the food product. The commonly used colorants in food production are the synthetic pigments, however, several health risks have been associated with them. Hence, the reason for the searches of natural pigments with substituting potential to synthetic ones. Prodigiosin is a red natural pigment popularly known to be produced by species of Serratia marcescence with high coloration potential and zero toxicity. However, its production has been associated to high cost due to several reasons including cost of importing efficient strains from foreign standardized laboratory, expensive medium, and extraction and purification processes. This review is engaged in providing guide to isolation of Serratia marcescens; while highlighting the organism’s isolation sources, morphological, biochemical and molecular characterization approaches. It also provides several methods and outcomes reported by other researchers that will be useful for ease and reliable isolation of the organism.