Immobilization of microbial cells using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) — polyacrylamide gels

✍ Scribed by Wang Jianlong; Hou Wenhua; Qian Yi

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 330 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0951-208X
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00157079

✦ Synopsis

A novel cell immobilization technique is developed in which polyvinyl alcohol is crosslinked with boric acid with addition of an acrylamide as a polymerizing agent. The presence of the polymerizing agent overcomes the problem of swelling of PVA gels in aqueous solution. The new immobilization method was used to entrap a phenol-degrading microorganism, a species of Pseudomonas. Phenol was successfully degraded in a shake-flask test of the beads demonstrating that cell viability was maintained following the immobilization procedure.