Engineering in Life Sciences最新文献

Childhood malnutrition is a metabolic condition that affects the physical and mental well-being of children and leads to resultant disorders in maturity. The development of childhood malnutrition is influenced by a number of physiological and environmental factors including metabolic stress, infections, diet, genetic variables, and gut microbiota. The imbalanced gut microbiota is one of the main environmental risk factors that significantly influence host physiology and childhood malnutrition progression. In this review, we have evaluated the gut microbiota association with undernutrition and overnutrition in children, and then the quantitative and qualitative significance of gut dysbiosis in order to reveal the impact of gut microbiota modification using probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation, and engineering biology methods as new therapeutic challenges in the management of disturbed energy homeostasis. Understanding the host–microbiota interaction and the remote regulation of other organs and pathways by gut microbiota can improve the effectiveness of new therapeutic approaches and mitigate the negative consequences of childhood malnutrition.

Continuous precipitation coupled with continuous tangential flow filtration is a cost-effective alternative for the capture of recombinant antibodies from crude cell culture supernatant. The removal of surge tanks between unit operations, by the adoption of tubular reactors, maintains a continuous harvest and mass flow of product with the advantage of a narrow residence time distribution (RTD). We developed a continuous process implementing two orthogonal precipitation methods, CaCl₂ precipitation for removal of host-cell DNA and polyethylene glycol (PEG) for capturing the recombinant antibody, with no influence on the glycosylation profile. Our lab-scale prototype consisting of two tubular reactors and two stages of tangential flow microfiltration was continuously operated for up to 8 days in a truly continuous fashion and without any product flow interruption, both as a stand-alone capture and as an integrated perfusion-capture. Furthermore, we explored the use of a negatively charged membrane adsorber for flow-through anion exchange as first polishing step. We obtained a product recovery of approximately 80% and constant product quality, with more than two logarithmic reduction values (LRVs) for both host-cell proteins and host-cell DNA by the combination of the precipitation-based capture and the first polishing step.

In the field of bioprocess development miniaturization, parallelization and flexibility play a key role reducing costs and time. To precisely meet these requirements, additive manufacturing (3D-printing) is an ideal technology. 3D-printing enables rapid prototyping and cost-effective fabrication of individually designed devices with complex geometries on demand. For successful bioprocess development, monitoring of process-relevant parameters, such as pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), and biomass, is crucial. Online monitoring is preferred as offline sampling is time-consuming and leads to loss of information. In this study, 3D-printed cultivation vessels with optical prisms are evaluated for the use in upstream processes of different industrially relevant microorganisms and cell lines. It was shown, that the 3D-printed optically modified well (OMW) is of benefit for a wide range of biotechnologically relevant microorganisms and even for mammalian suspension cells. Evaluation tests with Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells were performed, providing highly reproducible results. Growth behavior of OMW cultures was comparable to behavior of shake flask (SF) cultivations and the signal to noise ratio in online biomass measurement was shown to be reduced up to 95.8% by using the OMW. Especially the cultivation phases with low turbidity respective optical densities below 1.0 rel.AU could be monitored accurately for the first time. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the 3D-printed optics are transferable to different well geometries and sizes, enabling efficient biomass monitoring for individual requirements with tailor-made 3D-printed cultivation vessels in small scale.

Human activities have led to the release of various environmental pollutants, triggering ecological challenges. In situ, microbial communities in these contaminated environments are usually assumed to possess the potential capacity of pollutant degradation. However, the majority of genes and microorganisms in these environments remain uncharacterized and uncultured. The advent of meta-omics provided culture-independent solutions for exploring the functional genes and microorganisms within complex microbial communities. In this review, we highlight the applications and methodologies of meta-omics in uncovering of genes and microbes from contaminated environments. These findings may assist in future bioremediation research.

Recently, multimodal chromatography using restricted access media (RAM) for the purification of nanoparticles, such as viruses has regained increasing attention. These chromatography resins combine size exclusion on the particle shell and adsorptive interaction within the core. Accordingly, smaller process-related impurities, for example, DNA and proteins, can be retained, while larger product viruses can pass unhindered. We evaluated a range of currently available RAM, differing in the shells’ pore cut-off and the core chemistry, for the purification of a cell culture-derived clarified model virus, namely the Orf virus (ORFV). We examined impurity depletion and product recovery as relevant criteria for the evaluation of column performance, as well as scale-up robustness and regeneration potential for evaluating a multiple use application. The results indicate that some columns, for example, the Capto Core, enable both a high DNA and protein removal, while others, for example, the Monomix Core 60 (MC60), are more suitable for DNA depletion. Furthermore, column regeneration is facilitated by using columns with larger shell pores (5000 vs. 700 kDa) and weaker binding interactions (anion exchange vs. multimodal). According to these findings, the choice of RAM resins should be selected according to the respective feed sample composition and the planned number of application cycles.