Protein extraction, reverse micellar

Recently however, it has been recognized that liquid extraction is a potential method in the primary recovery of fermentation cell culture products, such as proteins and amino acids. The separation problem, however, is difficult because the product mixtures are often complex, including cell debris and enzymes. Proteins are not suitable for conventional solvent extraction because of incompatibility with organic solvents, but can be handled in aqueous two-phase systems or by extraction in reverse micellar systems (Chapter 15). 

Reverse Micellar Extraction for Downstream Processing of Proteins/Enzymes... 

Reverse micellar extraction (RME) is another attractive LLE method for DSP of biological products, as many biochemicals including amino acids, proteins, enzymes, and nucleic acids can be solubilized within and recovered from such solutions without loss of native function/activity. In addition, these systems offer low interfacial tension, ease of scale-up, and continuous operation. RME offers a number of unique, desirable features in comparison with ATPE, which has been extensively studied ... 

In order to be exploitable for extraction and purification of proteins/enzymes, RMs should exhibit two characteristic features. First, they should be capable of solubilizing proteins selectively. This protein uptake is referred to as forward extraction. Second, they should be able to release these proteins into aqueous phase so that a quantitative recovery of the purified protein can be obtained, which is referred to as back extraction. A schematic representation of protein solubilization in RMs from aqueous phase is shown in Fig. 2. In a number of recent publications, extraction and purification of proteins (both forward and back extraction) has been demonstrated using various reverse micellar systems [44,46-48]. In Table 2, exclusively various enzymes/proteins that are extracted using RMs as well as the stability and conformational studies of various enzymes in RMs are summarized. The studies revealed that the extraction process is generally controlled by various factors such as concentration and type of surfactant, pH and ionic strength of the aqueous phase, concentration and type of CO-surfactants, salts, charge of the protein, temperature, water content, size and shape of reverse micelles, etc. By manipulating these parameters selective sepa-... 

Transfer of solubihzed proteins from the reverse micellar phase back to an aqueous phase constitutes back extraction. A successful RME should include both forward and back extraction processes in their optimized conditions. In contrast to the extensive studies investigating the forward extraction process, back extraction has been addressed to a much lesser extent. Most of the earlier studies tacitly assume that conditions, which normally prevent protein uptake in the forward transfer, would promote their release in the back transfer. That is to select a pH and salt condition that had minimal forward transfer efficiency. This... 

Rate of protein transfer to or from a reverse micellar phase and factors affecting the rate are important for the practical applications of RME for the extraction and purification of proteins/enzymes and for scale-up. The mechanism of protein exchange between two immiscible phases (Fig. 2) can be divided into three steps [36] the diffusion of protein from bulk aqueous solution to the interface, the formation of a protein-containing micelle at the interface, and the diffusion of a protein-containing micelle in to the organic phase. The reverse steps are applicable for back transfer with the coalescence of protein-filled RM with the interface to release the protein. The overall mass transfer rate during an extraction processes will depend on which of these steps is rate limiting. 

Selection of a suitable reverse micellar system is mainly based on the nature and charge of the protein to be extracted. The optimization of forward and back extraction processes is carried out by studying the effect of various parameters (Sect. 3) on the extraction/stripping of proteins experimentally using full or... 

Efficient extraction of proteins has been reported with reverse micellar liquid membrane systems, where the pores of the membrane are filled with the reverse micellar phase and the enzyme is extracted from the aqueous phase on one side of membrane while the back extraction into a second aqueous phase takes place at the other side. By this, both the forward and back extractions can be performed using one membrane module [132,208]. Armstrong and Li [209] confirmed the general trends observed in phase transfer using a glass diffusion cell with a reverse micellar liquid membrane. Electrostatic interactions and surfactant concentration affected the protein transfer into the organic membrane and... 

Tween 85 is used extensively for RME [84]. Russell and coworkers [234] used Tween 85/isopropanol microemulsions in hexane to solubilize proteins and not only showed >80% solubilization of cytochrome C at optimum conditions, but also proved that Tween 85 does not have a detrimental effect on the structure, function, and stability of subtilisin and cytochrome C. There are other reports available on the extraction and purification of proteins using Tween 85-RMs and also on the stability of protein activity in these systems [234]. It has also been shown that Tween 85-RMs can solubilize larger amounts of protein and water than AOT. Tween 85 has an HLB of 11, which indicates that it is soluble in organic solvents. In addition, it is biodegradable and can be successfully used as an additive in fertihzers [235,236]. Pfammatter et al. [35] have demonstrated that RMs made of Tween 85 and Span 80 can be successfully used for the solubilization and growth of whole cells. Recently, Hossain et al. [84] showed an enhanced enzymatic activity of Chromobacterium viscosum Hpase in AOT/Tween 85 mixed reverse micellar systems when compared to that in classical AOT-RMs. This is due to the modification of the interface in AOT-RMs caused by the co-adsorption of Tween 85, and increased availability of the oHve oil molecules (substrate) to the enzyme. 

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