Bioreactor system for Industrial Biotechnology process development.

工业生物技术是阿伯里斯特威斯大学（Au）生物环境和农村科学研究所（IBERS）的核心研究平台。该平台将极大地受益于自动化生物反应器系统，该系统将能够在多毫升规模（50- 250 ml）上同时进行16次发酵，从而能够快速开发工业规模的发酵工艺。来自该系统的数据将能够识别和测试对发酵过程至关重要的多因素参数，以便在放大到工业相关生物过程之前优化生产率和产量。它将评估预处理技术产生的抑制剂，并允许对微生物之间的相互作用和微生物群落进行研究。该设备将大大减少过程优化的时间和费用，并在数据采集和分析方面提供阶跃变化增加。此外，该系统将通过补充IBERS和其他地方产生的代谢组学和下一代测序数据集来识别途径和代谢网络。组学时代的到来带来了对传统的、学术上表征的细菌和酵母发酵系统（如大肠杆菌和酿酒酵母）中微生物代谢的更好理解和建模。然而，这种理解水平很少超过摇瓶实验的规模，并且可能无法相应地反映IB条件或工业生产菌株。尽管严格控制，但在放大至工业相关体积（数百升）期间，发酵容器中的pH值、温度、流变产品滴度和底物可用性存在环境异质性。关于这种异质性对细胞生理学、代谢池以及在放大过程中学术模型和工业生物催化剂的全局基因表达的改变的影响，学术和工业知识都很缺乏。该设备将补充IBERS现有的发酵系统，包括6x 1 L、4x 10 L、1x 30 L、2x 70 L和1x 250 L自动化、精密控制的反应容器，允许在较小规模上进行类似的控制。Au将提供技术支持，向学术界和工业界提供这种设备，并将在网站、设备数据库和小册子上突出介绍。

Industrial biotechnology is a core research platform at the Institute of Biological Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University (AU). This platform will benefit greatly from an automated bioreactor system that will enable 16 simultaneous fermentations to be performed on a multi-millilitre scale (50-250ml) enabling rapid development of industrially scalable fermentation processes. Data from this system will enable identification and testing of multi-factorial parameters critical to fermentation processes in order to optimise productivity and yield, prior to scale-up to an industrially relevant bioprocess. It will assess inhibitors produced as a result of pre-processing technologies and allow studies on microbe-microbe interactions and microbe communities. This equipment would result in a major reduction in time and expense in process optimisation and provide a step change increase in data acquisition and analysis.Additionally this system will enable identification of pathways and metabolic networks by complementing the metabolomics and next generations sequencing data sets produced at IBERS and elsewhere. The advent of the omics era has bought about an improved understanding and modelling of microbial metabolism in traditional, academically characterised bacterial and yeast fermentation systems such as Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However, this level of understanding rarely exceeds the scale of shake flask experimentation and pertinently may not reflect IB conditions or industrial production strains. Although tightly controlled, environmental heterogeneity for pH, temperature, rheology product titre and substrate availability is experienced in fermentation vessels during scale-up to industrially relevant volumes (multiple hundreds of litres). There is a paucity of academic and industrial knowledge on the impact of this heterogeneity on cellular physiology, metabolic pools and alterations in global gene expression of both academic model and industrial biocatalysts during scale-up.This equipment will complement existing fermentation systems at IBERS which includes 6x1L, 4x10L, 1x30L, 2x70L and 1x250L automated, precision controlled reaction vessels, allowing for similar control on a smaller scale. Au will provide technical support and make this equipment available to both the academic and industrial community and will highlight it on web sites, equipment databases and brochures.