Publication details
Cultivation of photoautotrophic plant suspension cultures in photobioreactors.
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| Citation | |
| Description | The aim of our study is to find optimal conditions for cultivation of photoautotrophic (PA) plant cell cultures in photobioreactors (PBRs) originally designed for microalgae. Plant suspension cultures represent reduced model of a complex system of higher plants. They are used in biotechnology for production of secondary metabolites. They consist of single cells forming uniform population directly accessible to exogenous stimuli, which makes them ideal for experimental use. However, they need CO2 as a carbon source for their growth that makes the cultivation of PA cultures somewhat complicated. PBRs provide variable settings of light composition and intensity, temperature, and additional stirring; online monitoring of cultivation parameters; sterile cultivation conditions; CO2 enriched atmosphere. In addition, PBR enable upscale of culture’s working volume (from regular 70 mL up to 400 mL) providing A) enough homogenous material for consequent experiments, B) intermediate step in advanced upscaling for biotechnological applications. In our experiments, we compare three different cultivation setups: 1) regular setup in two-tiered flasks with separated CO2 buffer in the bottom part, 2) novel setup in Erlenmeyer flask in special cultivation chamber with CO2 enriched atmosphere, 3) novel setup in PBR with CO2 enriched air supply. Various growth characteristics including chlorophyll and biomass production were measured throughout the 3-week time course of the experiments. Presented data are for PA cell culture of Chenopodium rubrum. Our results show that the cultivation in much simpler setup of Erlenmeyer flasks is comparable to the traditional, more laborious, cultivation in two-tiered flasks. Regarding the cultivation in PBRs, results indicate the possibility of cultivation of PA cell cultures in PBRs originally constructed for cultivation of microalgae, however several species specific issues connected to upscaling have to be still resolved. |