Microbial lifelines in bioprocesses

Microbial lifelines in bioprocesses: From concept to application

Blöbaum, Luisa (Bielefeld University)
Haringa, C. (TU Delft BT/Bioprocess Engineering)
Grünberger, Alexander (Bielefeld University; Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie)

2023

Bioprocesses are scaled up for the production of large product quantities. With larger fermenter volumes, mixing becomes increasingly inefficient and environmental gradients get more prominent than in smaller scales. Environmental gradients have an impact on the microorganism's metabolism, which makes the prediction of large-scale performance difficult and can lead to scale-up failure. A promising approach for improved understanding and estimation of dynamics of microbial populations in large-scale bioprocesses is the analysis of microbial lifelines. The lifeline of a microbe in a bioprocess is the experience of environmental gradients from a cell's perspective, which can be described as a time series of position, environment and intracellular condition. Currently, lifelines are predominantly determined using models with computational fluid dynamics, but new technical developments in flow-following sensor particles and microfluidic single-cell cultivation open the door to a more interdisciplinary concept. We critically review the current concepts and challenges in lifeline determination and application of lifeline analysis, as well as strategies for the integration of these techniques into bioprocess development. Lifelines can contribute to a successful scale-up by guiding scale-down experiments and identifying strain engineering targets or bioreactor optimisations.

Bioprocess development
Bioprocess modelling
Bioreactor gradients
Computational fluid dynamics
Flow-following sensors
Microbial lifeline
Microfluidics
Scale-down
Single-cell cultivation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:dc4e13e6-53c7-4490-a78e-bd0b586a03a6

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2022.108071

2023-07-01

Biotechnology Advances, 62, 108071

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

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© 2023 Luisa Blöbaum, C. Haringa, Alexander Grünberger