Progress in biocatalysis with immobilized viable whole cells: systems development, reaction engineering and applications

Abstract

Viable microbial cells are important biocatalysts in the production of fine chemicals and biofuels, in environmental applications and also in emerging applications such as biosensors or medicine. Their increasing significance is driven mainly by the intensive development of high performance recombinant strains supplying multienzyme cascade reaction pathways, and by advances in preservation of the native state and stability of whole-cell biocatalysts throughout their application. In many cases, the stability and performance of whole-cell biocatalysts can be highly improved by controlled immobilization techniques. This review summarizes the current progress in the development of immobilized whole-cell biocatalysts, the immobilization methods as well as in the bioreaction engineering aspects and economical aspects of their biocatalytic applications.

Polyelectrolyte Complex Beads by Novel Two-Step Process for Improved Performance of Viable Whole-Cell Baeyer-Villiger Monoxygenase by Immobilization

“…Additionally, there is also an increased effort to optimise immobilization by predicting and modelling the bioengineering parameters of potential industrial processes [13]. On the other hand, current practice in industrial applications of immobilized biocatalysts [14] does not entail the consistent characterisation of the immobilization procedure and influence over the geometry, size, stability of composition, mechanical and diffusion properties of immobilized cell particles.…”

Design and Operation of Fixed-Bed Bioreactors for Immobilized Bacterial Culture

“…Consequently, both the operational stability of the immobilized organisms and the productivity are improved. Despite the obvious advantages of fixed-bed bioreactor systems, the number of industrial fixed-bed processes is quite small [2][3][4]. To some extent, this is due to the lack of process development tools for fixed-bed processes and meaningful concepts for design and operation of fixed-bed reactors on a large scale.…”

“…Technologies for immobilization of biocatalyst, e.g., microbial or mammalian cells, are increasingly being considered for biotechnological processes due to many advantages compared to cell suspension culture such as continuous operation, accelerated reaction rates, high volumetric productivity, retention of plasmidbearing cells, prevention of interfacial inactivation, stimulation of production and excretion of secondary metabolites, and protection against turbulent high-shear environment, reduced susceptibility of cells to contamination, improved production efficiency, and reduced risk of washout [1][2][3]. Especially the increased importance of productivity for industrial processes due to restriction of production time and final product volume has drawn the attention to immobilization techniques in recent years, as they allow overcoming most of the limitations of commonly applied suspension cultures [2].…”

“…Various immobilization techniques such as the entrapment of cells in stable porous gels (e.g., alginate, agarose, collagen, chitosan, cellulose, κ-carrageenan, or gel-matrix polymers such as polyacrylamide-hydrazide) or hydrogels or immobilization in solid macroporous carriers have been developed and are applied in both laboratory and industrial scales for different purposes, e.g., food, dairy, and beverage industry, production of drugs, wastewater treatment, agricultural industry, and biodiesel production [2][3][4].…”

A Method of Early Phase Selection of Carrier forAspergillus Oryzae β-Galactosidase Immobilization for Galactooligosaccharides Production

“…Immobilization of enzymes is, in general, a way to improve enzyme applicability in industry . Immobilization enhances the biocatalyst lifetime and simplifies its separation from the reaction mixture.…”