KINETIC MODELING OF CELL GROWTH AND PRODUCT FORMATION IN SUBMERGED CULTURE OF RECOMBINANT ASPERGILLUS NIGER

Abstract

The kinetics of cell growth and protein production for the recombinant Aspergillus niger strain AB4.1[pgpdAGLAGFP]#11 were investigated. An unstructured kinetic model was developed to describe the cell growth and product formation mathematically. The dynamics of glucose consumption and biomass production can be well-described by the model. The assumption that the degradation of GFP by proteases is a first-order reaction can express the trend of the GFP profile reasonably well. The dynamics of protease production is also described reasonably well by considering the inhibition effect of glucose on protease production. Because of the high initial glucose concentration and keeping the pH value of the broth at 6, the protease activity could be kept low most of the time during the fermentation. The increase of protease activity near the end of the culture might be caused by cell lysis because the intracellular protease activity was much higher than the extracellular activity.

Keywords:

• Aspergillus niger
• Fermentation
• Kinetics
• Recombinant protein