Whole cell entrapment techniques

Abstract

Microbial whole cells are efficient, ecological, and low-cost catalysts that have been successfully applied in the pharmaceutical, environmental, and alimentary industries, among others. Microorganism immobilization is a good way to carry out the bioprocess under preparative conditions. The main advantages of this methodology lie in their high operational stability, easy upstream separation and bioprocess scale-up feasibility. Cell entrapment is the most widely used technique for whole cell immobilization. This technique - in which the cells are included within a rigid network - is porous enough to allow the diffusion of substrates and products, protects the selected microorganism from the reaction medium, and has high immobilization efficiency (100 % in most cases). © Springer Science+Business Media, New York 2013.