P6: Escherichia coli Growth and Production Response to Various Trace Metal Levels

Trace metals such as iron, copper and zinc play a vital role in the metabolic pathways of Escherichia coli and are needed to enhance cell growth and therapeutic protein production.  However, higher concentrations of metals in fermentation medium can be detrimental to the bacterial cells and can have opposing results to those sought from the high protein production demands of an industrial pharmaceutical fermentation process.  As a result, the trace metal supplementation strategy needs to balance these two disparate fermentation outcomes to reach beneficial growth and production levels.  This study has focused on the effect of varying concentrations of Fe⁺³, Cu⁺² and Zn⁺² for E. coli grown in complex media.  Shake flask and fermentor studies have established the trace metal levels that are inhibitory to the growth of the E. coli cells used for the basis of this study.  Data from both study sets will be reviewed.