A bi-layer electrospun nanofiber membrane for plasmid DNA recovery from fermentation broths

• Autor(a) principal: Correia, Tiago R.
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Antunes, Bernardo Paiva, Castilho, Pedro Henrique Barata, Nunes, José, Amorim, Maria T. Pessoa de, Escobar, Isabel, Queiroz, João, Correia, I.J., Morão, António
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/4636
• topic: Microfiltration; Electrospinning; Bi-layer membrane; Lysate; Plasmid DNA

The demanding ever-increasing quantities of highly purified biomolecules by bio-industries, has triggered the development of new, more efficient, purification techniques. The application of membrane-based technologies has become very attractive in this field, for their high throughput capability, simplicity of operation and scale-up. Herein we report the production of a bi-layer membrane by electrospinning (ES), in which a support of poly ε-caprolactone nanofibers was coated with a polyethylene oxide/sodium alginate layer, and subsequently cross-linked with calcium chloride. The membranes were characterized by SEM, ATR-FTIR, contact angle measurements, and were applied in the recovery process of a plasmid. The results show that membranes retained the suspended solids while allowing the permeation of plasmid DNA, with high recovery yields and improved RNA retention. Moreover, they also showed a very low fouling tendency. To the best of our knowledge it is the first time that ES membranes are applied in this type of bioprocess.