Journal
CRITICAL REVIEWS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 36, Issue 6, Pages 1066-1077Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.3109/07388551.2015.1084262
Keywords
Driving forces; electrophoretic interaction; fungal morphology; hydrophobicity; pellet formation; spore wall components
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21306112]
- Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Foundation [13ZR1429100]
- Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars
- Training Project of Young Teachers of Universities in Shanghai [slg14037]
- State Education Ministry
- Foundation of Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology of Ministry of Education
- Tianjin Key Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology (Tianjin University of Science Technology) [2013IM002]
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Filamentous fungi play an important role not only in the bio-manufacturing of value-added products, but also in bioenergy and environmental research. The bioprocess manipulation of filamentous fungi is more difficult than that of other microbial species because of their different pellet morphologies and the presence of tangled mycelia under different cultivation conditions. Fungal pellets, which have the advantages of harvest ease, low fermentation broth viscosity and high yield of some proteins, have been used for a long time. Many attempts have been made to establish the relationship between pellet and product yield using quantitative approaches. Fungal pellet formation is attributed to the combination of electrostatic interactions, hydrophobicity and specific interactions from spore wall components. Electrostatic interactions result from van der Waals forces and negative charge repulsion from carboxyl groups in the spore wall structure. Electrostatic interactions are also affected by counter-ions (cations) and the physiologic conditions of spores that modify the carboxyl groups. Fungal aggregates are promoted by the hydrophobicity generated by hydrophobins, which form a hydrophobic coat that covers the spore. The specific interactions of spore wall components contribute to spore aggregation through salt bridging. A model of spore aggregation was proposed based on these forces. Additionally, some challenges were addressed, including the limitations of research techniques, the quantitative determination of forces and the complex information of biological systems, to clarify the mechanism of fungal pellet formation.
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