Determination of the maximum specific uptake capacities for glucose and oxygen in glucose-limited fed-batch cultivations of Escherichia coli

• A simple pulse-based method for the determination of the maximum uptake capacities for glucose a nd oxygen in glucose limited cultivations of E. coli is presented. The method does not depend on the time-consuming analysis of glucose or acetate, and therefore can be used to control the feed rate in glucose limited cultivations, such as fed-batch processes. The application of this method in fed-batch processes of E. coli showed that the uptake capacity for neither glucose nor oxygen is a constant parameter, as often is assumed in fed-batch models. The glucose uptake capacity decreased significantly when the specific growth rate decreased below 0.15 h(-1) and fell to about 0.6 mmol g(-1) h(-1) (mmol per g cell dry weight and hour) at the end of fed-batch fermentations, where mu was approximately 0.02 h(-1). The oxygen uptake capacity started to decrease somewhat earlier when mu declined below 0.25 h(-1) and was 5 mmol g(-1) h(-1) at the end of the fermentations. The behavior of both uptake systems is integrated in a dynamic model which allows a better fitting of experimental values for glucose in fed-batch processes in comparison to generally used unstructured kinetic models.

Keyword

fed-batch-fermentation

kinetic model

acetate

oxygen uptake

dissolved oxygen tension

high-cell-density

recombinant protein-production

phenylalanine production

human interleukin-2

fermenter cultures

acetate formation

feeding strategy

growth

expression

metabolism

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)