John Chi-Wei Lan

Novel approaches of producing bioenergies from microalgae: a recent review.

Microalgae have caught the worlds attention for its potential to solve one of the worlds most pressing issues-sustainable green energy. Compared to biofuels supplied by oil palm, rapeseed, soybean and sugar cane, microalgae alone can be manipulated to generate larger amounts of biodiesel, bioethanol, biohydrogen and biomass in a shorter time. Apart from higher productivity, microalgae can also grow using brackish water on non-arable land, greatly reducing the competition with food and cash crops. Hence, numerous efforts have been put into the commercialisation of microalgae-derived biofuel by both the government and private bodies. This paper serves to review conventional and novel methods for microalgae culture and biomass harvest, as well as recent developments in techniques for microalgal biofuel production.

Physical and biochemical characterization of a simple intermediate between fluidized and expanded bed contactors

Physical and biochemical comparison has been made of the performance of a simple fluidised bed contactor and a commercial expanded bed contactor, characterised by identical dimensions, and operated at various settled bed heights with two anion exchange adsorbents. The contactors were tested with various feedstocks comprising bovine albumin in the absence and presence of 20 g dry cell weight biomass litre-1. Earlier classification of the simple contactor as a single-stage, well mixed fluidised bed is reviewed. The relative merits of STREAMLINE DEAE and DEAE Spherodex LS as fluidisable, anion exchange adsorbents are discussed.

Overview of citric acid production from Aspergillus niger

Citric acid has high economic potential owing to its numerous applications. It is mostly produced by microbial fermentation using Aspergillus niger. In view of surges in demand and growing markets, there is always a need for the discovery and development of better production techniques and solutions to improve production yields and the efficiency of product recovery. To support the enormous scale of production, it is necessary and important for the production process to be environmentally friendly by utilizing readily available and inexpensive agro-industrial waste products, while maintaining high production yields. This article reviews the biochemistry of citric acid formation, choices of citric-acid producing microorganisms and raw materials, fermentation strategies, the effects of various fermentation conditions, citric acid recovery options and the numerous applications of citric acid, based on information drawn from the literature over the past 10 years.

Exploring redox-mediating characteristics of textile dye-bearing microbial fuel cells: thionin and malachite green

Prior studies indicated that biodecolorized intermediates of azo dyes could act as electron shuttles to stimulate wastewater decolorization and bioelectricity generation (WD&BG) in microbial fuel cells (MFCs). This study tended to explore whether non-azo textile dyes (i.e., thionin and malachite green) could also own such redox-mediating capabilities for WD&BG. Prior findings mentioned that OH and/or NH2 substitute-containing auxochrome compounds (e.g., 2-aminophenol and 1,2-dihydroxybenzene) could effectively mediate electron transport in MFCs for simultaneous WD&BG. This work clearly suggested that the presence of electron-mediating textile dyes (e.g., thionin and malachite green (MG)) in MFCs is promising to stimulate color removal and bioelectricity generation. That is, using MFCs as operation strategy for wastewater biodecolorization is economically promising in industrial applications due to autocatalytic acceleration of electron-flux for WD&BG in MFCs.

Review of Microbial Lipase Purification Using Aqueous Two-phase Systems

Microbial lipase has been recognized as one of the important biocatalysts due to its widely diversified enzymatic properties and substrate specificities. With the increased awareness of environmental protection and cost issue, lipase-catalyzed reactions have been viewed as the sustainable replacement for the chemical-driven reactions used in manufacture of biochemical products, biopharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, foods and agrochemicals. However, production of lipases derived from microbial origin would normally require an effort-intensive purification step owing to the complexity of culture broth and the necessity of retaining lipase’s bioactive state. A great variety of lipases from bacterial and fungal sources have been purified to homogeneity by using general purification strategies such as precipitation and chromatographic separation. As a whole, these traditional purification techniques are usually multi-steps, laborious, non-specific, operated at small scale and potentially unsatisfactory in term of purity level. Alternative purification methods are therefore being explored in order to improve the overall yield and reduce the processing time. Advances in the purification methods have greatly expanded the choices of selection in designing the highly specialized purification scheme for various microbial lipases. This review focuses on the application of aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) as an alternative bioseparation method used in the purification of lipase from microbial sources. Moreover, the integration of ATPS in bioprocessing units such as fermentation as well as other purification technique was also reviewed.

Novel lipase purification methods - a review of the latest developments.

Microbial lipases are popular biocatalysts due to their ability to catalyse diverse reactions such as hydrolysis, esterification, and acidolysis. Lipases function efficiently on various substrates in aqueous and non‐aqueous media. Lipases are chemo‐, regio‐, and enantio‐specific, and are useful in various industries, including those manufacturing food, detergents, and pharmaceuticals. A large number of lipases from fungal and bacterial sources have been isolated and purified to homogeneity. This success is attributed to the development of both conventional and novel purification techniques. This review highlights the use of these techniques in lipase purification, including conventional techniques such as: (i) ammonium sulphate fractionation; (ii) ion‐exchange; (iii) gel filtration and affinity chromatography; as well as novel techniques such as (iv) reverse micellar system; (v) membrane processes; (vi) immunopurification; (vi) aqueous two‐phase system; and (vii) aqueous two‐phase floatation. A summary of the purification schemes for various bacterial and fungal lipases are also provided.

Current applications of different type of aqueous two-phase systems

In recent year, aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) has become a proven tool used in separation and purification technology. The application of ATPSs in clarification, partitioning and partial purification of biomolecules and bioproducts had showed the rapid development. This method is able to give high recovery yield and high purity in a single step. The ATPS shows characteristics of high selectivity and is easily to scale up. Therefore, ATPS offers an attractive alternative that meets the requirements of the high demand in industry processes and it is also beneficial in terms of economic and environmental protection. In the past, a lot of works and researches have been done in order to develop feasible separation processes using different types of ATPSs and their applications in numerous product separations. This paper aims to review on the recent literature works in the development of different type of ATPSs and their applications in novel separations and purifications of biomaterials.Graphical abstract:The development of aqueous two-phase flotation from aqueous two-phase system

Partition separation and characterization of the polyhydroxyalkanoates synthase produced from recombinant Escherichia coli using an aqueous two-phase system

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are renewable and biodegradable polyesters which can be synthesized either by numerous of microorganisms in vivo or synthase in vitro. The synthesis of PHAs in vitro requires an efficient separation for high yield of purified enzyme. The recombinant Escherichia coli harboring phaC gene derived from Ralstonia eutropha H16 was cultivated in the chemically defined medium for overexpression of synthase in the present work. The purification and characteristics of PHA synthase from clarified feedstock by using aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) was investigated. The optimized concentration of ATPS for partitioning PHA synthase contained polyethylene glycol 6000 (30%, w/w) and potassium phosphate (8%, w/w) with 3.25 volume ratio in the absence of NaCl at pH 8.7 and 4°C. The results showed that the partition coefficient of enzyme activity and protein content are 6.07 and 0.22, respectively. The specific activity, selectivity, purification fold and recovery of phaC(Re) achieved 1.76 U mg⁻¹, 29.05, 16.23 and 95.32%, respectively. Several metal ions demonstrated a significant effect on activity of purified enzyme. The purified enzyme displayed maximum relative activity as operating condition at pH value of 7.5 and 37°C. As compared to conventional purification processes, ATPS can be a promising technique applied for rapid recovery of PHA synthase and preparation of large quantity of PHA synthase on synthesis of P(3HB) in vitro.

Aerobic utilization of crude glycerol by recombinant Escherichia coli for simultaneous production of poly 3-hydroxybutyrate and bioethanol.

Crude glycerol, an inevitable byproduct during biodiesel production, is emerging as a potential feedstock for fermentation, due to its availability and a reasonable price. Biological utilization of abundant crude glycerol to several value added products is contemporary research area with beneficial features. Solving the problem of proper disposal and raising economic viability of biodiesel industries. Several researches have been directed toward the production of numerous products by using Escherichia coli, an ideal organism for heterologous expression of various foreign proteins. In this fashion, recombinant E. coli strains were constructed for the simultaneous production of poly 3-hydroxybutyrate (P3HB) and bioethanol from crude glycerol. The incorporation of aldehyde reductase (Alrd) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (AldH) in recombinant strain showed 2-fold increment in crude glycerol utilization under aerobic condition. Moreover, these two enzymes introduced an alternative pathway leading toward the potential production of bioethanol which was more than redox-balancing steps. Acetate was accumulated as an intermediate product. Subsequently, acetate was utilized as substrate in the second pathway, which directly converted acetyl-CoA to P3HB. This strategy demonstrated a potential production manner of bioethanol as an extracellular product and P3HB as water insoluble inclusion bodies inside E. coli. The maximum production of bioethanol and P3HB in the recombinant strain was 0.8 g L(-1) (17.4 mmol L(-1)) and 30.2% (w/w dry cell weight), respectively, which were higher than the parental strain.

In vitro evidence of chain transfer to tetraethylene glycols in enzymatic polymerization of polyhydroxyalkanoate

A polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) was enzymatically synthesized in vitro, and the end structure of PHA associated with a chain transfer (CT) reaction was investigated. In the CT reaction, PHA chain transfers from PHA synthase (PhaC) to a CT agent, resulting in covalent bonding of CT agent to the PHA chain at its carboxyl end. In vitro CT reaction has never been demonstrated because of relatively low yields of in vitro synthesized poly[(R)-3-hydroxybutyrate)] (P(3HB)), which makes it difficult to characterize the end structures of the polymers by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). To overcome these difficulties, a novel in vitro synthesis method that produced relatively larger amounts of P(3HB) was developed by employing PhaCDa from Delftia acidovorans and two enantioselective enoyl-coenzyme A (CoA) hydratases which were R-hydratase (PhaJAc) from Aeromonas caviae and S-hydratase (FadB1x) from Pseudomonas putida KT2440 with β-butyrolactone and CoA as starting materials. Using this method, P(3HB) synthesis was performed with tetraethylene glycols (TEGs) as a discriminable CT agent, and the resultant P(3HB) was characterized by 1H-NMR. NMR analysis revealed that the carboxylic end of P(3HB) was covalently linked to TEGs, providing the first direct evidence of in vitro CT reaction.