Microbial side-chain cleavage of phytosterols by mycobacteria in vegetable oil/aqueous two-phase system

Microbial side-chain cleavage of natural sterols to 4-androstene-3,17-dione (AD) and 1,4-androstadiene-3,17-dione (ADD) by Mycobacteria has received much attention in pharmaceutical industry, while low yield of the reaction owing to the strong hydrophobicity of sterols is a tough problem to be solved urgently. Eight kinds of vegetable oils, i.e., sunflower, peanut, corn, olive, linseed, walnut, grape seed, and rice oil, were used to construct oil/aqueous biphasic systems in the biotransformation of phytosterols by Mycobacterium sp. MB 3683 cells. The results indicated that vegetable oils are suitable for phytosterol biotransformation. Specially, the yield of AD carried out in sunflower biphasic system (phase ratio of 1:9, oil to aqueous) was greatly increased to 84.8 % with 10 g/L feeding concentration after 120-h transformation at 30 °C and 200 rpm. Distribution coefficients of AD in different oil/aqueous systems were also determined. Because vegetable oils are of low cost and because of their eco-friendly characters, there is a great potential for the application of oil/aqueous two-phase systems in bacteria whole cell biocatalysis.