Conversion of Fumaric Acid to Malic Acid in a Liquid-membrane Emulsion

Abstract

The technique for producing and applying liquid-membrane emulsions will be illustrated here in the fumarase reaction. As already described in Sect. 5.8, the reaction catalyzed by fumarase leads to the hydrolytic conversion of fumaric acid to malic acid. Normally, this process is carried out with dead cells; the use of a liquid membrane as an alternative will almost certainly not attain any economic importance. It is nevertheless well suited for illustrating the liquid membrane technique as such, since it is straightforward to perform and its progress can be followed by simple analytical procedures. Although multienzyme systems in liquid-membrane emulsions, including retention of cofactors (Makryaleas et al. 1985), are known from the literature, the technique as a whole is still at a preliminary stage.