Kim CJ  Park SO  Chang YK  Chun GT  Lee JD  Kim SY

Vol. 4,  No. 1, pp. 45-59, Jun.  1998

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Continuous immobilized-cell culture was carried out for the production of kasugamycin, a secondary metabolite by a filamentous bacteria, Streptomyces kasugaensis, with an intention of reducing waste generation. A sporulation medium was developed for production of bulk amounts of spores, and the spores were entrapped into celite biosupports for immobilization. It was possible to effectively keep the immobilized-cells inside the reactor during the continuous culture by an efficient immobilized cell separator of decantor type on the outlet of the fermentor. Using this continuous immobilized-cell fermentor system, we investigated the effects of feed substrate and phosphate concentrations on kasugamycin production and chemical oxygen demand(COD). Comparing with the conventional suspended-cell batch culture, the kasugamycin productivity was observed to increase by 2.5 times, whereas COD per unit kasugamycin production decreased by 2.3 times in the continuous immobilized-cell culture. Based on these results, the continuous immobilized-cell system was considered to be a cleaner bioprocess than the conventional batch suspended-cell system.