An Improved Method of Microbial Cell Disruption

破坏细胞膜是恢复微生物细胞中所含物质的第一步。传统技术通常涉及高剪切、热产生和多阶段加工，所有这些因素都可能导致所需产品的降解。此外，这些技术经常导致产生小的细胞壁碎片，这增加了下游纯化的负担。这项工作提出了一种细胞破碎的方法，可以避免这些困难，提高产品产量，并证明更经济。该方法是爆炸减压的一种改进形式，是基于超临界流体或低沸点液体减压时可能迅速产生的大的比容变化。任何需要微生物细胞破坏的过程都可能从拟议的爆炸性破坏方法中受益匪浅。在大多数生物制品的生产中，下游加工占总成本的50%至80%。这种细胞破坏技术的发展可能会导致许多用于人类健康保健的重要蛋白质的经济恢复，否则这些蛋白质将被忽视。

Disruption of the cell envelope is one of the first steps in the recovery of materials contained within microbial cells. Conventional techniques typically involve high shear, heat generation, and multiple stage processing, all factors which can lead to degradation of the desired product. Furthermore, these techniques often lead to the creation of small cell wall fragments which adds to the burden of downstream purification. This work suggests a method of cell disruption which may avoid these difficulties, improve product yields, and prove more economical as well. The method, a modified form of explosive decompression, is based on the large specific volume changes which may be rapidly effected upon depressurization of a supercritical fluid or low-boiling liquid. Any process requiring microbial cell disruption may benefit significantly from the proposed explosive disruption method. Downstream processing accounts for 50 percent to 80 percent of the total cost in the production of most bioproducts. The development of this technique for cell disruption could lead to the economical recovery of many important proteins for human health care that will otherwise be neglected.