Acta Chimica Slovaca (ACS) publishes papers on fundamental and applied aspects of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical technology, chemical engineering and process control, biotechnology and food technology. Welcome are also topics which include chemical aspects of materials, physical chemistry and chemical physics, analytical chemistry, macromolecular chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Pre-purification of Plantago lanceolata extracts with biologically active compounds using yeast cells

Vladimír Štefuca *, Lukáš Rada, Alžbeta Chochulová, Michal Rosenberg

Institute of Biotechnology, Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Radlinského 9, SK-812 37 Bratislava, Slovakia

E-mail: * vladimir.stefuca@stuba.sk

Abstract:

Leaves of the plant Plantago lanceolata contain many economically interesting bioactive compounds, among them aucubin and catalpol are the most attractive. However, soluble saccharides passing to water extracts during isolation complicate chromatographic purification of these compounds. Their degradation by microbial cells transforming, for example, glucose, fructose, or sucrose to ethanol could bring important production costs savings and improved final product quality. It has been shown that the best saccharide degradation in extracts is achieved with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. The cells were very active also in their immobilized form and they were able to completely remove glucose from the extract within four hours in a packed bed reactor combined with a stirring system with infinite medium recirculation.

A simple mathematical model involving reaction kinetics and mass transfer limitations in the cell particles was proposed for the evaluation of cell effectiveness in their immobilized form in term of effectiveness factor. Values of the effectiveness factor calculated from the model were far below 1, indicating strong mass transfer limitations of the reaction. The model is suitable for optimization of preparation of immobilized cell particles, mainly from the point of view of cell charge in particles.

Keywords: Plantago lanceolata, bioactive compounds, pre-purification method, immobilized cells, saccharide removal

Full paper in Portable Document Format: acs_0314.pdf

Acta Chimica Slovaca, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2018, pp. 163—169, DOI: 10.2478/acs-2018-0023