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Immobilization of Enzymes and Cells Related to Industrial Micobiology

Immobilization of Enzymes and Cells Related to Industrial Microbiology - Besides gene-cloning, in microbial biotechnology several commercial processes have used immobilised microbial cells and enzymes in the last few, years. Enzymes have been used in industry for over 70 years, initially in detergents that is still perhaps one of the largest bulk users of proteases and lipases.

In conventional biological industries also microbial enzymes have been used, e.g. proteases and amylases in malting and rennet in cheese manufacture. However, during last 15 years or so, immobilised cells and enzymes have been used as production systems.

(1) Enzymes carry out stereospeciftc reactions with high accuracy, whereas chemical technology results into many side-products from which the desired product is to be purified.

(2) Enzymes are cheap and carry out reactions "It low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, where as chemical catalysts require special and expensive conditions.

(3) Since there is much diversity in microbial world, an enzyme for a desired reaction can be easily found out by merely screening a range of microbes.

(4) Mutants with altered enzyme function can be isolated with appropriate genetic methods. Thus enzymes having different substrate specificities or with different physical properties (as temperature resistance) can be isolated. Also conventional genetics and gene cloning can be used for making specific changes in genes to increase the expression of the desired enzyme.

More recently, whole microbial cells have been used for specific chemical transformations. This should not be confused with anaerobic fermentation or conventional secondary metabolite production. Here only part of the cell's metabolism is now being utilised, usually a single pathway, and sometimes only a single enzyme.

The advantage of using cells is that the expense of purifying the enzyme is avoided and, in some cases, the enzyme is more stable in its natural environment than after purification. Frequently, cells and enzymes are subjected to immobilisation on an inert support.

The stability of an enzyme is improved after its immobilisation. Immobilisation affords a simple way of separating the enzyme or cell from the products when the reaction is complete and is likely to prove invaluable in the development of biological sensors (biosensors) - special electrodes based upto the selectivity and high affinity of enzymes for their substrates
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