The song remains the same. The lab bench dilemma of using shaken flasks in microbial biotransformation experiments

Abstract

Microbial biotransformation is valuable for obtaining pharmaceutical, nutritional, and cosmetical potential molecules. Basically, for its realization, only a parental molecule, a microorganism, and a suitable fermentation system are needed. Regarding the last requirement, the most common resource used for screenings are the shaken flasks (a.k.a., conical flasks or Erlenmeyers). Despite their popularity, several concerning points discussed here limit their utilization. Multiparametric bioreactors give more reliable results but are expensive and the need for many of them for parallelized screenings becomes inaccessible for many research groups. In this review, we present some problems associated with this issue and strategies to solve them.

Keywords:

• Microbial biotransformation
• bioprocessing
• bioreactors
• shaken flasks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior [001].