At the recent ACS conference (September 2006) one presentation reported that the production of a non-glyosylated protein by Pichia Pastoris  was improved by almost 30% by using the Aber Biomass Monitor to control nutrient feed rates.

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 feed rate (and hence maintaining a constant rate of delivery/ viable cell). 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.

For more information on this application, please contact Aber Instruments.

 

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