Application of flow cytometry analysis to elucidate the impact of scale-down conditions in Escherichia coli cultivations P. Gil Salvador 2013 Award in Bioengineering category. (November 22, 2013 in the Annual General Assembly of the AIQS)

Abstract

Inhomogeneities appear in large-scale fed-batch bioprocesses;especially when the distribution of the feedingsolution and of the oxygen is uneven. In order to studythe consequences of these heterogenic conditions on theculture, scale-down bioreactor experiments have beendesigned. These studies have revealed that cells exposedto oscillatory conditions are affected on various cellularlevels of regulation. However, not many of these studieshave been performed on the observation of the behaviourof the single cell level of Escherichia coli. Therefore, flowcytometry (FCM) is chosen as analytical tool to study thecellular viability in the scale-down approaches of a twocompartment reactor (Two-CR) and a newly establishedthree compartment reactor (Three-CR). An optimization ofdifferent staining methods applied in these experiments isalso performed, since staining procedures for flow cytometrystudies of bacterial populations are still not well-established yet.