Institut für Systembiotechnologie

Straight from the lab

New liquid chromatography for production characterization

At the iSBio, a new device for the quantification of sugars and acids in fermentation samples has arrived. Our analysis specialist Michel Fritz has already started to commission Agilent's new high-performance chromatography (HPLC) and to establish analytical protocols. Miniaturized chromatography columns are to be used, which allow even shorter analysis times due to the small particle size of the separating material. Coupled to a diode array detector and a refractive index detector, the device can detect a variety of substances. The acquisition was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the MyBio project. The instrument complements our existing HPLC analysis capacity and is used to characterize natural product producers of the genus Streptomyces. Concretely, cultivation processes are to be monitored in order to obtain important production properties of the investigated microorganisms for the further optimization of cells and process.