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Miniature bioreactors for automated high‐throughput bioprocess design (HTBD): reproducibility of parallel fed‐batch cultivations with Escherichia coli

2005; Wiley; Volume: 42; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1042/ba20040197

1470-8744

Robert Puskeiler, Andreas Kusterer, Gernot T. John, Dirk Weuster‐Botz,

Fluid Dynamics and Mixing

To verify the reproducibility of cultivations of Escherichia coli in novel millilitre‐scale bioreactors, fully automated fed‐batch cultivation was performed in seven parallel‐operated ml‐scale bioreactors with an initial volume of 10 ml/reactor. The process was automatically controlled by a liquid‐handling system responsible for glucose feeding, titration and sampling. Atline analysis (carried out externally of the reaction vessel with a short time delay) comprised automated pH and attenuance measurements. The partial pressure of oxygen ( p O 2 ) was measured online by a novel fluorimetric sensor block measuring the fluorescence lifetime of fluorophors immobilized inside the millilitre‐scale bioreactors. Within a process time of 14.6 h, the parallel cultivation yielded a dry cell weight of 36.9±0.9 g·l −1 . Atline pH measurements were characterized by an S.D. of <1.1% throughout the process. Computational‐fluid‐dynamics simulation of single‐phase flow yields a mean power input of 21.9 W·l −1 at an impeller speed of 2800 rev./min corresponding to a power number ( N P ) of 3.7.