Bioreactor with integrated mass-spectroscopy

Largus(Lars)Angenent教授团队正在Tübingen大学应用地球科学中心(ZAG)进行环境生物技术领域的研究。他的团队将于2020年初与其他13个环境研究学科一起，搬进大学校园内的一座新建筑--Geo-und UmWeltforschungszentum。Angenent专注于三个核心主题，这三个主题的共同目标是将工业气体和有机废水中的碳回收到微生物生成的燃料或其他有价值的化学品(如中链羧酸)中。这包括合成气发酵、x次方和链延长的主题。生物反应器的使用对这项研究至关重要。到目前为止，该小组已经专门设计并改造了这些生物反应器，以满足各自的项目要求。然而，对于转基因纯培养物(例如永达氏梭菌、甲烷热营养杆菌)和同位素标记的含碳气体的系统生物学研究来说，不需要独特的设计。在这里，例如，有必要通过标准化的培养实验来验证电子产生的分子生物学基因组规模的代谢模型(GEM)，以评估和适应该代谢模型。此外，还将对转基因菌株进行测试，以回答有关代谢途径的具体研究问题。通过这种方式，可以阐明含碳气体发酵中的微生物代谢过程，并为未来的生物技术应用最大化其效率。系统生物学研究的关键是使用全自动流量计，它允许底物(含碳气体)的供应和去除以及底物周转率保持恒定(稳定状态)。为了评估生物反应器的性能，有必要建立进出C组分的完全碳平衡。为此，生物反应器与气体分析设备的耦合是必不可少的，气体分析设备以极高的时间分辨率分析和量化输入的C气体底物、输出的残留气体以及微生物反应产物(例如CH4)。这里，需要一个带有控制单元和四个生物反应器容器的生物反应器系统。该系统最多可操作四个独立可控的生物反应器容器。此外，还包括一个气体质谱仪，它可以定量识别各个生物反应器的进气和出气相以及相应的微生物反应产物。与其他测量方法(GC-MS、红外线或气体计)相比，气体质谱仪的优势在于无需昂贵的仪器转换即可快速准确地测量有机和无机气体成分。

The group of Prof. Largus (Lars) Angenent is conducting research in the field of Environmental Biotechnology at the Centre for Applied Geosciences (ZAG) at the University of Tübingen. His group will move in the beginning of 2020, together with 13 other environmental research disciplines, into the Geo- und Umweltforschungszentrum, which is a new building on the university’s campus. Angenent focuses on three core topics that have the common goal of recovering carbon from industrial gases and from organic wastewater into microbially generated fuels or other valuable chemicals (e.g., medium-chain carboxylic acids). This includes the topics of syngas fermentation, power-to-x, and chain elongation. The use of bioreactors is essential for this research. So far, the group has specifically designed and adapted these bioreactors to the respective project requirements. However, a unique design is not necessary for systems biology research with genetically modified pure cultures (e.g., Clostridium ljungdahlii, Methanothermobacter thermautotrophicus) and isotopically labelled C-containing gases. Here it is necessary to, for example, validate in-silico generated molecular biological genome-scale metabolic models (GEM) by standardized cultivation experiments to evaluate and adapt the metabolic model. In addition, genetically modified strain will be tested to answer specific research questions about the metabolic pathways. In this way, microbial metabolic processes in the fermentation of C-containing gases can be elucidated and their efficiency maximized for future biotechnological applications. Essential for the systems biology research is the use of fully automatic flow meters, which allow the supply and removal of substrate (C-containing gas) as well as the substrate turnover to be kept constant (steady-state). To evaluate the performance of the bioreactors, it is necessary to create a complete carbon balance of the incoming and outgoing C-components. A coupling of the bioreactor to a gas analysis device, which analyzes and quantifies the incoming C-gas substrate, the outgoing residual gas as well as microbial reaction products (e.g., CH4) at extremely high temporal resolution, is indispensable for this. Here, a bioreactor system with control unit and four bioreactor vessels is requested. This system allows the operation of up to four independently controllable bioreactor vessels. In addition, a gas mass spectrometer is included, which quantitatively identifies the incoming and outgoing gas phase of the respective bioreactors as well as the corresponding microbial reaction products. The advantage of a gas mass spectrometer compared to alternative measuring methods (GC-MS, infrared or gas meter) is the fast and precise measurement of organic and inorganic gas components without costly instrument conversions.