A mycelium with polyelectrolyte complex-bunched hyphae: preparation and fermentation performance

We studied the immobilization of a mycelium (Aspergillus niger) using the working hypothesis as follows: (a) when polycation was added to the cell suspension, a few parts of it would bind on the surface of a hypha, allowing to gather the hyphae in part but not all; (b) upon further addition of polyanion, such a gathering of the hyphae is tightly bunched by the polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) which is resulted from the remaining polycation; (c) as a result, a mycelium with partially bunched hyphae can be obtained. Potassium poly(vinyl alcohol) sulfate and trimethylammonium glycol chitosan iodide [6-O-(2-hydroxyethyl-2-(trimethylamonio)-chitosan iodide) were used as the polyanion and the polycation, respectively. The optical and electron microscopic analyses showed that our immobilized cell contains many of PEC-bunched hyphae. The sedimentation rate increased with the weight ratio of PEC to dry cells and leveled off at the weight ratio larger than 0.5. The gluconic acid production from glucose was studied by a semi-large scale (1l) cultivation of the imobilized and free cells using a jar fermentor. It was found that an apparent specific activity of the immobilized cells for glucose oxidation becomes 1.44 times that of the free cells even at a high cell density of 40 g/l.