Chen Yaosheng has been engaged in university education since 1927, and has taught fermentation and sugar-making technology in several famous universities in China. After the founding of New China, he continued to teach in Jiangnan University, Fudan University and Shanghai First Medical College. In his years of teaching, he has trained a large number of outstanding talents, some of whom are directors of famous microbiology research institutes, members of academic departments, some are senior researchers and some are senior production engineers, all of which have played an important role in the national fermentation cause.
From 65438 to 0983, 84-year-old Chen Yaosheng was transferred from Shanghai Institute of Industrial Microbiology to Shanghai University of Science and Technology. With the support of relevant parties, the first bioengineering department in China was established, and 1983 began to enroll students. The graduates have worked in various fields of biochemistry and won favorable comments. The department of bioengineering originally had only one major in biochemical engineering, and 1988 added the major of food industry. Under the suggestion and organization of Chen Yaosheng, 1986 built a 4000-square-meter biological building.
In writing, Chen Yaosheng has published more than 20 monographs and more than 0/00 research papers. During his work in the alcohol factory of Puyi Sugar Factory in Shandong Province, he used his spare time to collect extensive literature and combined with notes from field trips to write A Sugar Industry in the World, which was published by Shanghai Commercial Press 1928.
During the Anti-Japanese War, he still insisted on writing, and completed the General Theory of Brewing (the first volume) and the Theory of Brewing Credits (the second volume) of about10.4 million words. These two monographs were included in the university series and sold out after publication. After Japan surrendered, it was reprinted by the Commercial Press, which was highly valued by academic circles.
During the Cultural Revolution, Chen Yaosheng was forced to move to an apartment upstairs, struggling during the day and working hard at night. At that time, he had a relapse of diabetes and was skinny, fearing that he would die soon. He doesn't want to see the fruits of decades of labor go down the drain. He secretly recalled his experience in industrial microbiology and wrote it on stationery with the only ballpoint pen at that time. This is the first draft of "The Development History of Microbiological Industry in China", and later won the National Excellent Science and Technology Book Award. This book was published by Beijing Light Industry Publishing House on 1979, and was well received by Joseph Needham, editor-in-chief of History of Science and Technology in China, A.L.Demain, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Kenichiro Sakaguchi, You Ma Qi and Jingyi Tanaka, Japanese professors. It is regarded as the best book on the history of science published after the liberation of China.
1976, Chen Yaosheng claimed that it would take three years to write Modern Industrial Microbiology with 500,000 words. After that, he actively collected information. As a result, the book was written in only two years, about 1 10,000 words. He also edited the series of chemical processing of agricultural and sideline products, which played a certain role in promoting agriculture.
Improve the traditional brewing technology in China.
There are many kinds of traditional brewing products in China with excellent quality. Wine, soy sauce and so on are very popular. In the production process, the ancient method is generally adopted. When Chen Yaosheng worked in Nanjing Central Industrial Laboratory, he made a full study of traditional brewing technology. In the field of liquor, he collected a wide range of medicinal liquor and distiller's yeast from various provinces in China, and analyzed and experimented with the microorganisms in them, from which he isolated a variety of yeasts and molds. It is preliminarily considered that Rhizopus is the main mold in hangover relieving agent and Aspergillus is the main mold in distiller's yeast. He believes that the microorganisms contained in koji are extremely complex and need further study. In "Random Talk on Liquor" (china alcoholic drinks association II 1989), he proposed that "I hope that the production and research units of liquor will gather experts in microbiology, biochemistry and analytical chemistry, and Qi Xin will make concerted efforts to master the aroma-producing bacteria of various famous wines in a short time, and then use the mixed fermentation method of pure bacteria of famous wines to produce brewed liquor with the same quality as famous wines. This not only improves the output of starch wine, but also saves a lot of food, and the fermentation time is short, and the labor intensity can be greatly reduced. "
After on-the-spot investigation of many soy sauce workshops in Beijing and Shanghai (then known as soy sauce gardens), Chen Yaosheng came to a conclusion that the traditional soy sauce production method in China-natural fermentation, has a long mature period (at least one year) and great labor intensity, which has reached the point where it must be changed. He visited Japan and went to his hometown to inspect the production process of soybean oil in detail. He found that there is only one raw material used to produce soybean oil, which takes about one or two months to brew, and it is famous for its delicious taste. He consulted the literature and made a comparative study. Finally, he confirmed that when brewing soy sauce, starch turned into sugar, and the activity of protease was hindered because of the large use of starch raw materials (such as flour). So, he used beans and wheat to make koji, fermented for one month and then mixed for another month, so that the soy sauce mash was cooked in only two months, and the quality of the finished product was exactly the same as that of the finished product fermented naturally for more than one year. After the initial trial of soy sauce rapid brewing method was successful, he used a bungalow of hundreds of square meters in an old paper mill to build more than 100 insulated fermentation tanks to produce soy sauce in batches. The success of this method immediately attracted the attention of domestic brewing circles and was regarded as the forerunner of soy sauce brewing reform in China.
In the past, China used natural fermentation to make sauce. Chen Yaosheng took the lead in isolating a strain of Aspergillus oryzae with high protease activity from the old method "Huang Zi", and made it into seed koji, which was distributed to the national sauce gardens. This kind of pure bacteria koji can produce soy sauce all year round, and the natural fermentation law is affected by the season, so it is very popular in the national sauce garden.
In addition, he also used cheap raw materials, such as bean cake instead of soybean and bran instead of wheat, to produce soy sauce, which saved a lot of food for the country.
In just three years, Chen Yaosheng studied and reformed the soy sauce technology and achieved brilliant results. In order to popularize the new soy sauce production technology, he set up a soy sauce workshop, edited lecture notes and served as a lecturer, which trained many talents for the brewing industry.
Contribute to alcohol fermentation technology
Chen Yaosheng has been engaged in alcohol fermentation research for nearly 70 years since 1922. Although he has done a lot of research work on industrial microorganisms, he has never been divorced from the research on alcohol fermentation, and the progress of alcohol fermentation technology in China is also inseparable from his research results.
1922 After graduating from university, Chen Yaosheng worked as an assistant technician in the alcohol factory of Puyi Sugar Factory in Huangpi County, Shandong Province. At that time, there were few factories producing alcohol in China, and most of them were handled or controlled by foreigners. Puyi Sugar Factory Alcohol Factory is a wholly Chinese-owned enterprise. At first, the Japanese Watanabe presided over the alcohol fermentation technology. Watanabe has some experience in grain fermentation, but he has never done anything about how to produce alcohol with beet molasses, so he has repeatedly failed in brewing alcohol with beet molasses. Chen Yaosheng carefully studied the reasons for the difficulty in fermentation and found that beet molasses used contained a lot of sodium nitrate. Molasses stored in the open air for three years are contaminated by bacteria, especially butyric acid bacteria, which decompose sugar into butyric acid and bimolecular hydrogen. This kind of hydrogen can reduce nitric acid into nitric oxide, which will turn into brown and foul-smelling nitrogen dioxide when it meets air, and escape from the mash, and the generated nitric oxide remains in the mash, which hinders alcohol fermentation and often stops the fermentation halfway. After finding out the reason, Chen Yaosheng took measures to pretreat molasses. Results 24 kg alcohol was produced per 100 kg molasses, and the fermentation efficiency was 85%, which achieved the expected effect. When the research was successful, the factory held a special celebration, and announced on the spot that Chen Yaocheng was an engineer to take over the post of technical director of Watanabe, and his salary doubled. At this time, German expert Lin Deman and Japanese expert Horizo, the company's technical consultant, congratulated him on this internationally advanced achievement and signed the certificate.
1933, Overseas Chinese Jianyuan Company chose Bailianjing in Pudong to set up China Alcohol Factory, covering an area of 100 mu. Sugarcane molasses imported from Nanyang is the raw material for producing alcohol. The main machines are imported from abroad. It is estimated that the daily output of alcohol is 20,000 gallons (about 90,922 liters), which is the largest in the Far East. At the beginning of alcohol production, Brown was a well-paid British engineer in charge of production. It was put into production blindly without a small test, and finally failed after several months of trial operation. After Chen Yaosheng arrived at the factory, in an old building near the dock, he and some technicians analyzed the composition of sugarcane molasses raw materials and conducted small-scale fermentation experiments. The experimental results show that sugarcane molasses is nitrogen deficient. It is necessary to supplement nitrogen source, otherwise the nutrient salt of enzyme mother is insufficient and fermentation cannot be carried out. In the selection of fermentation strains, he conducted repeated comparative experiments and obtained the best yeast strain with high fermentation efficiency for sugarcane molasses. According to the results of the small test, he fermented molasses and won the first battle. Alcohol rolled out of the outlet pipe of the distiller, and the daily output was twice as expected. The general manager of Jianyuan Company said: "China people are really amazing, and they have surpassed the British in technology."
During the Republic of China, the raw materials used in China alcohol industry were divided into two categories, one was molasses, and the other was sweet potato, corn, sorghum and other food raw materials. At that time, the saccharifying agent used in the production of alcohol from starch food raw materials was mainly bran koji, and some of them used malt. These two saccharifying powers were weak and the utilization rate of starch was low. As early as 1930s, Chen Yaosheng studied how to improve saccharifying power and fermentation yield. During the period of 1955, when he was in Shanghai Institute of Light Industry, he made a detailed comparative study on koji-making between Aspergillus Niger and Aspergillus oryzae, which proved that Aspergillus Niger was indeed superior to Aspergillus oryzae, with the advantages of strong saccharification, good acid resistance and heat resistance, which was beneficial to saccharification and fermentation. Chen Yaosheng led the workers to carry out the Aspergillus Niger experiment. After many twists and turns, the preparation method of Aspergillus Niger was finally determined. The utilization rate of alcohol-fermented starch increased from about 75% to about 94%, which greatly saved food.
For a long time, solid koji has been used to ferment alcohol with starch raw materials, which is labor-intensive. Based on the daily production of 7 tons of alcohol, koji-making needs more than 20 strong laborers, and there are more than 5,000 koji discs, covering an area of 500-800 square meters, and the production scale is limited. Chen Yaosheng cooperated with Shanghai Alcohol Factory to prepare liquid koji by deep aeration culture. From 1956 to 1959, the utilization rate of starch reached 90% ~ 94%, which completely innovated the alcohol production process, greatly reduced the labor intensity, improved the environmental sanitation, and made the production develop to mechanization and scale. It was commended by the Ministry of Light Industry.
After serving as the head of bioengineering department at Shanghai University of Science and Technology, Chen Yaosheng directed the experiment of producing alcohol by fermentation with bacteria instead of yeast. The main results are as follows: (1) Using wine pool water instead of yeast extract as the main component of culture medium makes it possible to produce alcohol by bacteria; ② Using starch hydrolysate as raw material, immobilized bacterial cells can continuously produce alcohol. In this way, the alcohol production capacity of bacterial fermentation is 2.65 times that of yeast fermentation, and the speed of bacterial fermentation is much faster than that of yeast, which is very practical. This achievement points out a huge potential direction for improving productivity.
Establish a new system of industrial microorganisms in modern China.
During the Republic of China, the microbial industry only produced some traditional brewing industries such as alcohol and yeast. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in order to change this situation, Chen Yaosheng consulted a large number of books to capture the latest development information of industrial microorganisms in time. First put forward the research topics of enzyme preparation, organic acid, amino acid and nucleic acid. Under his personal guidance, through the joint efforts of everyone, some achievements have been made.
There are many kinds of enzyme preparations. In the early 1950s, China's enzyme preparation industry was still blank. At that time, the Culture Preservation Committee of China Academy of Sciences was studying the crystallization of bacterial amylase α-amylase. Chen Yaosheng thinks that bacterial amylase can be used for desizing in textile mills. At his suggestion, from 65438 to 0957, Shanghai Institute of Light Industry first carried out the research on the industrial production of bacterial amylase. 1960, Shanghai Meilin Food Factory built a 3000-liter fermentor to expand the trial production of bacterial amylase for cotton desizing. He also put forward many constructive suggestions on the production and application of glucoamylase and protease. With everyone's efforts, mold neutral and acidic proteases have been widely used in tanning, fur, biochemical pharmaceuticals and other industries in China.
As for organic acids, Chen Yaosheng studied lactic acid in his early years. In 1950s, he was engaged in the research of gluconic acid in Jiangnan University. During the period of 1964, Chen Yaosheng directed the research on the production of citric acid from coarse sugar by shallow dish fermentation in the Institute of Light Industry. Later, Shanghai Institute of Light Industry, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Microbiology and Shanghai Yeast Factory conducted in-depth research on citric acid fermentation. Citric acid was produced from dried potato by submerged liquid aeration culture, and the fermentation efficiency was high. After putting into production, the annual output of citric acid in China increased, from import to export.
China monosodium glutamate industry was founded in 1923 and started in Wu monosodium glutamate factory. The raw material used at that time was gluten, and the method used was hydrochloric acid hydrolysis. This production technology not only has few sources of raw materials, but also has high price, and the smell of hydrochloric acid in the factory is pungent, the acid mist is diffuse and the working environment is poor. In the early 1950s, Takero Muxia, a Japanese Concord fermentation company, invented the fermentation method to produce monosodium glutamate. In this method, starch and nitrogen source are used as raw materials, and monosodium glutamate is synthesized by using carbon and nitrogen sources through microbial fermentation. 2 ~ 3 kg of starch can be made into 1 kg monosodium glutamate, with low cost and high degree of mechanization. After learning about it, Chen Yaosheng immediately began to consult relevant literature, and made an academic report on "Glutamate Fermentation" in Shanghai Chemical and Chemical Society, which aroused widespread interest inside and outside the industry. Shanghai Institute of Light Industry and Chutian MSG Factory have cooperated with the Institute of Biochemistry of China Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry to carry out screening research on glutamic acid-producing bacteria. Under the guidance and personal participation of Chen Yaosheng, the fermentation laboratory of Shanghai Institute of Light Industry finally succeeded after several failures and continuous summarization. Since then, factories producing monosodium glutamate by fermentation have spread all over the country. Hydrolysis method was replaced by new method, and the national glutamic acid output was 654.38+ten thousand tons, ranking first in the world. This indicates that the production process of monosodium glutamate in China has entered a new era of metabolic regulation from general fermentation.
Due to the successful study of glutamic acid, other amino acids such as lysine, aspartic acid and glutamine have also been successfully studied. Amino acid fermentation industry has gradually formed.
As for nucleic acid, Chen Yaosheng strongly advocated fermentation production in the early 1960s. He once gave an academic report on "Application of Nucleic Acid in Food Industry" in Beijing Science Hall, which encouraged the research on nucleotides and aroused great interest of the participants. Soon domestic nucleotide research was carried out, and under his guidance, yeast ribonucleic acid was hydrolyzed by mold 5'- phosphodiesterase to produce 5'- inosinic acid and 5'- uridylic acid. These nucleotides have the function of enhancing freshness, and they are called flavor-presenting nucleotides. Adding some monosodium glutamate to monosodium glutamate is called extra fresh monosodium glutamate, and adding some soy sauce is called extra fresh soy sauce. This industrial technology is very promising.
Chen Yaosheng has also made many achievements in other new industrial microorganisms, such as riboflavin, butanol and acetone, yeast and other industries.
Chen Yaosheng loves the motherland and the * * * production party, although he was severely persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. But after the downfall of the Gang of Four, he saw the reform and opening-up policy of the motherland, which was encouraging. He firmly believes that only the * * * production party can save China. 1986 gloriously joined the China * * * production party.
(Author: (Chen Zhengyi))