Thursday, August 2, 2007 - 10:55 AM
S166

Whole cell microbial transformation in cloud point system

Zhilong Wang, School of Pharmacy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Dongchuan Road 800, Shanghai, 200240, China

To improve the stability and activity of a biocatalyst in a nonaqueous medium, a technique usually refers as “medium engineering”, i.e., selection a nonaqueous solution other than improvement the biocatalyst itself to achieve a relatively higher stability and activity of the biocatalyst in the nonaqueous solution, is being studied extensively. Cloud point system as a novel two-phase partitioning system has been exploited for enzymatic hydrolysis of penicillin G in our previous works. Whole cell of microorganism as a biocatalyst is more advantage for a biotransformation in which the process involves cofactors or more than one kind of enzymes. Redox reaction involving cofactor regeneration usually prefers to apply whole cells as the biocatalyst.

Biocatalytic oxidation of a hydrophobic compound cholesterol into androsta-diene-dione (ADD) by Mycobacterium sp., biocatalytic reduction of chiral alcohol from prochiral ketone mediated by Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast), which mainly involves a cofactor regeneration with the viability cell, and biotransformation of benzaldehyde into L-phenylacetylcarbinol (PAC) by whole cell of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which needs the viability cell to produce a cosubstrate pyruvic acid, were studied in cloud point system as models . The results indicate that cloud point system used as a novel two-phase partitioning system for biotransformation has a practical potential. However, the utilization of cloud point system for biotransformation is in its infancy and will need further study of more model reactions besides about the process control and the downstream process before it will be used in an industrial application.