D-xylonic acid from recombinant E. coli BL21 (DE3): Comparison between shake flask and benchtop bioreactor fermentation

Abstract

Production D-xylonic acid from recombinant E. coli BL21 (DE3) at a small scale has been successfully done several times. In an attempt to scale up the production process to a bigger scale, fermentation in bioreactor was conducted. The comparison on growth of recombinant E. coli BL21 (DE3) and production of D-xylonic acid in both shake flask and bioreactor was investigated. Higher specific growth rate of recombinant E. coli BL21 (DE3) and concentration of D-xylonic acid however, was obtained by fermentation in shake flask which is 0.273 h-1 and 9.06 gL-1 D-xylonic acid respectively. The result suggests several mistakes done during fermentation in bioreactor that causes low concentration of D-xylonic acid in bioreactor fermentation. Therefore, this calls up for improvement and better scale-up strategies in future work.