Abstract
Phytosterols, generated as a by-product of vegetable oils or wood pulp, contain the cyclopentane-perhydro-phenanthrene nucleus, and can be converted into steroid intermediates by removing the C17 side chain. This chapter shows the scale-up, from flask to fermentor, of the phytosterols bioconversion into 4-androstene-3,17-dione (androstenedione; AD) with Mycobacterium neoaurum B-3805. Due to the fact that phytosterols and AD are nearly insoluble in water, two-phase systems and the use of chemically modified cyclodextrins have been described as methods to solve it. Here we use a water–oil two-phase system that allows for the bioconversion of up to 20 g/L of phytosterols into AD in 20 L fermentor.
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Acknowledgments
This work was fully supported by a grant of the European Union program ERA-IB [MySterI (EIB.12.010)] through the APCIN call of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, Spain) (PCIN-2013-024-C02-01). The authors want to thank the European Union program ERA-IB; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, Spain) and the MySterI Consortium (INBIOTEC, Pharmins Ltd., University of York, SINTEF, Technische Universität Dortmund, and Gadea Biopharma S.L.).
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Martínez-Cámara, S., Bahíllo, E., Barredo, JL., Rodríguez-Sáiz, M. (2017). Scale-Up of Phytosterols Bioconversion into Androstenedione. In: Barredo, JL., Herráiz, I. (eds) Microbial Steroids. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1645. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7183-1_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7183-1_14
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