How Do You Scale a Fast‑Growing Microbe Without Losing Performance?
This common challenge in Vibrio natriegens bioprocess development is explored in an application note published in collaboration with Toulouse White Biotechnology. It investigates how Vibrio natriegens fermentation processes can be optimized at the milliliter scale and transferred to a pre‑pilot scale of 20 L.
Vibrio natriegens is a fast growing, non‑pathogenic microorganism, making it an attractive production host, but also a challenging one to scale due to high oxygen demand and sensitivity to feeding strategies. In this work, the high-throughput BioLector XT Microbioreactor was used to evaluate media composition, inoculation density, induction timing, and fed‑batch strategies before transferring the identified optimized processes to a 20 L bioreactor.
Key Findings:
- Milliliter scale fed‑batch optimization predicted 20 L bioreactor performance
- Feed medium composition and early feed start had a larger impact than feeding profile
- A high‑performance process achieved ~1.8X higher biomass at both scales
- Strong correlation between small- and pre‑pilot‑scale results validated scalability
By running 32 parallel experiments with real‑time monitoring of biomass, dissolved oxygen, pH, and fluorescence data, the team was able to more accurately inform their scale-up decisions.
How This Can Help Your Lab:
This work demonstrates that well‑designed small scale experiments can deliver reliable insights into oxygen‑limited, high‑growth fermentations and accelerate time to scale for industrial bioprocess development.
Ready to See the Data?
Download the full application note to explore the experimental design, feeding strategies and BioLector XT Microbioreactor scale‑up results in detail.
