Permeabilized microbes in biotechnology

AlkL is an outer membrane porin from Pseudomonas. Its expression in E. coli was shown to greatly stimulate the oxidation of hydrophobic substrates by a a recombinant oxygenase enzyme system. Bacterial membranes can be perturbed for biotechnological purposes by enzymatic treatment. Some of the enzymes and their actions are discussed on this commercial site. Different chemical treatments that are known to perturb membrane structure were used in this study to optimize the bacterial production of L-carnitine in a whole cell system. Chemical permeabilization is also used to release proteins of interest from recombinant E. coli cells. This study focused on guanidine-HCl and Triton X100. In this study, cells were permeabilized and then immobilized to obtain a stable whole cell preparation expressing penicillin G acylase activity. This thesis involved studies on outer membrane perturbation for the cellular uptake of macromolecules such as DNA.