Many many many people don't soak their grains and get away with it all the time nothing is set in concrete here. Many people try not soaking and end up with yellow sludge in their jars this is a bacteria contam.
Soaking is not to add moisture to the grain it is to let endospores germinate. The reason we want them to do this is once germinated they can be killed at a much lower temp. In the endospore state it takes much higher temps then a pc can handle.
Sorry about the boaring part but here is a little info on them
The definition of an endospore is an extremely heat-and chemical-resistant, dormant, thick-walled spore that develops within bacteria. Endospores are extraordinarily resistant to environmental stresses including heat, UV radiation, gamma radiation, chemical disinfectants, and desiccation. Endospores can remain viable for thousands of years or longer. An example of this are some endospores that were found on Dominican bees that had been encased in amber for 25 - 40 million years. These dormant structures can be found in several different types of bacteria: Bacillus, Clostridium, and Sporosarcina. I will be trying to isolate Bacillus in my experiment, and after isolation prove that it is indeed an endospore forming bacterium by getting it to transform into its dormant/ spore state.
Bacillus is a gram-positive aerobe that can be found in soil. It appears as straight rods 0.5 - 2.5 x 1.2 - 10 mm, and is chemoorganotrophic, which means that it gets its energy by oxidizing chemical compounds, and organic molecules are its electron source.
Here are some examples of spore forming bacteria out in the world: Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium botulinum (both anaerobes) are food poisoning microorganisms. C. perfringens commonly occurs in meats that have been heated (O2 depletion) and then slowly cooled. As these are ingested the cells sporulate in the intestine, producing an enterotoxin that causes symptoms of nausea, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps. C. botulinum is found on potatoes that are not heated sufficiently and cause the production of toxins. Bacillus cereus is another spore forming bacterium that also is found on starchy foods like rice. Its symptoms are similar to those of C. perfringens.
Microorganisms are also used in bioterrorism. One such spore forming bacterium is Bacillus anthracis which results in anthrax. This organism's endospores can survive for decades in animal products and soil. It can enter the body through cuts and abrasions (cutaneous anthrax), or by inhaling endospores (pulmonary anthrax). Symptoms resemble that of the flu, and if it invades the bloodstream the disease can be fatal.
Vancomycin is an antibiotic that is bactericidal for some forms of Bacillus and Clostridium, as well as other microorganisms. It works by binding to the D-alanine-D-alanine sequence so the peptide interbridge cannot be formed. This results in the formation of weak peptidoglycan which eventually leads to the cells lysing because of osmotic differences.
Sporulation is the process by which an active vegetative cell turns into its dormant spore state. This occurs because of a lack of nutrients, or because the cell was exposed to environmental stress. There are several steps to the process which are discussed below: Formation of nuclear filament within the vegetative cell. Cell membrane folds inward enclosing part of the DNA and forming the septum. Continuation of the cell membrane to fold inward and engulf the immature spore. Spore cortex is formed in the space between the two membranes. A protein coat is developed around the cortex. The spore continues to mature within the sporangium (mother cell). Lysis of sporangium and release of spore.
For a spore to go back to its active vegetative cell state, it goes through a process called germination. Amino acids and sugars are two examples of the nutrients that can trigger germination. This involves the spore swelling, either the absorption or rupture of the spore coat, loss of heat/chemical resistance, the release of spore components, and increased metabolic activity. The third stage, outgrowth, follows germination. This involves the synthesis of new components, and emergence from the spore coat ready to develop into an active bacterium.
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