Microbial biotechnology | 2021
A polyhydroxyalkanoates bioprocess improvement case study based on four fed-batch feeding strategies.
Abstract
The modelling and optimization of a process for the production of the medium chain length polyhydroxyalkanoate (mcl-PHA) by the bacterium Pseudomonas putida KT2440 when fed a synthetic fatty acid mixture (SFAM) was investigated. Four novel feeding strategies were developed and tested using a constructed model and the optimum one implemented in further experiments. This strategy yielded a cell dry weight of 70.6\xa0g l-1 in 25\xa0h containing 38% PHA using SFAM at 5\xa0l scale. A phosphate starvation strategy was implemented to improve PHA content, and this yielded 94.1\xa0g l-1 in 25\xa0h containing 56% PHA using SFAM at 5\xa0l scale. The process was successfully operated at 20\xa0l resulting in a cell dry weight of 91.2\xa0g l-1 containing 65% PHA at the end of a 25-h incubation.