Continuous artificial synthesis of glucose precursor using enzyme-immobilized microfluidic reactors

Yujiao Zhu, Ziyu Huang, Qingming Chen, Qian Wu, Xiaowen Huang, Pui-Kin So, Liyang Shao, Zhongping Yao, Yanwei Jia, Zhaohui Li, Weixing Yu, Yi Yang, Aoqun Jian, Shengbo Sang, Wendong Zhang and Xuming Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Yujiao Zhu: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Ziyu Huang: Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences)
Qingming Chen: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Qian Wu: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Xiaowen Huang: Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences)
Pui-Kin So: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Liyang Shao: Southern University of Science and Technology
Zhongping Yao: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Yanwei Jia: University of Macau
Zhaohui Li: Sun Yat-Sen University
Weixing Yu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yi Yang: Wuhan University
Aoqun Jian: Taiyuan University of Technology
Shengbo Sang: Taiyuan University of Technology
Wendong Zhang: Taiyuan University of Technology
Xuming Zhang: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Food production in green crops is severely limited by low activity and poor specificity of D-ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO) in natural photosynthesis (NPS). This work presents a scientific solution to overcome this problem by immobilizing RuBisCO into a microfluidic reactor, which demonstrates a continuous production of glucose precursor at 13.8 μmol g−1 RuBisCO min−1 from CO2 and ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate. Experiments show that the RuBisCO immobilization significantly enhances enzyme stabilities (7.2 folds in storage stability, 6.7 folds in thermal stability), and also improves the reusability (90.4% activity retained after 5 cycles of reuse and 78.5% after 10 cycles). This work mimics the NPS pathway with scalable microreactors for continuous synthesis of glucose precursor using very small amount of RuBisCO. Although still far from industrial production, this work demonstrates artificial synthesis of basic food materials by replicating the light-independent reactions of NPS, which may hold the key to food crisis relief and future space colonization.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12089-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12089-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12089-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().