Production of L-Tryptophan by Enzymatic Processes

효소공정에 의한 트립토판 생산

- Enzymatic synthesis of L-tryptophan(Trp) using E. coli tryptophanase has been investigated. In order to reduce the substrate inhibition by indole and to increase the product yield of L-tryptophan three different approaches have been made in this work. First, indole was intermittently fed to the reaction mixture in order to control the indole concentration at lower level. When 15 mM of indole was used as a total amount of substrate, conversion yield of 80% has been obtained with intermittent feeding while only 20% of indole was converted into L-tryptophan by conventional batch operation, The second method employed in this work was the use of cyclohexane-phosphate buffer organic two-phase system. In this system, indole was mainly partitioned into the organic-solvent phase and therefore substrate inhibition was expected to be reduced. L-Tryptophan production in organic two-phase system was, however, unexpectedly lower than that obtained in aqueous buffer solution. As a third method cyclodextrins have been added to the aqueous reaction mixture. It was found that the addition of $\beta$-cyclodextrin enhanced the tryptophan synthesis noticeably while $\alpha$-cycfodextrin showed little effect on tryptophan production.

Tryptophanase를 이용하여 트립토판 합성시 인돌의 효소활성 저해를 억제하기 위하여 유가식 조업, 유기용매 이상계의 사용, 그리고 cyclodextrin의 첨가등에 대하여 연구하였다. 효소 농도가 0.5mg/ml일때 인돌 농도 0.4mM 부근에서 트립토판 생성이 가장 빨랐으며 그 이상에서는 효소활성이 심한 저해를 받았다. 초기 인돌 농도가 20mM일 때는 27시간 반응후 인돌의 전환율이 20인데 비하여 반응기내 인돌 농도를 5mM 이하로 유가식 조업을 하였을 때 전환율이 80%로 향상되었다.