Pichia Pastoris has become established as an attractive host for the expression of recombinant genes at high levels. Its advantage includes growth to high cell density on simple inexpensive media, the ability to introduce some eukaryotic post translational modifications and secretion of the product into the culture supernatant almost free of contaminating proteins.

With Biomass levels of up to 500g/L wet weight being achieved in some laboratories, monitoring the concentration levels of viable Pichia Pastoris with the BIOMASS MONITOR can be valuable for fine tuning and controlling the nutrient feed rate. Cell growth profiles of the batch, can be used to identify the key events or phases during the culture such as the switch over from fed batch glycerol to continuous methanol feeding. As the Biomass Monitor is ideal for measuring high concentrations and only measures the VIABLE fraction, the instrument would detect any loss of viability of the culture when exposed to cytotoxic levels of methanol.

Customers have reported that the Biomass Monitor can improve productivity of protein production by up to 30% by using the Biomass Monitor. This has been achieved by  indexing the glucose feed rate with the live cell mass determined in pFcm and hence maintaining a constant rate of delivery/ viable cell.

 

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