Plasma Treated Bacterial Cellulose Membrane For Enzyme Immobilization

Nowadays, the technology of immobilized enzyme is widely used, with a greatdevelopment potential. A new approach is proposed to immobilize enzyme into bacterialcellulose (BC) membrane via plasma treatment, which activates the surface groups of BCmembrane and forms an active coating to immobilize enzyme by covalent bonding.Compared with other methods of enzyme immobilization, especially cross-linking agentmethod mostly used, plasma treatment can protect the surface functional groups of thecarrier as well as enzyme activity; as a carrier, BC membranes have good affinity andbiocompatibility together with natural network structure to perform well in immobilizingenzyme.BC membranes were biosynthesized by Gluconacetobacter xylinus (ATCC53582),and treated by Helium-plasma going through ammonia. Lipase was immobilized into theplasma treated BC membrane. The amount of immobilized enzyme (Q) was investigatedby determining the difference of protein concentration in enzyme solution before andafter the immobilization using Bradford method. The Q of plasma method wasincreased by more than three times, compared to the method without plasma treatment.Processing parameters were also studied. Helium-plasma, Dielectric Barrier Discharges(DBD) were considered to be ideal and economical.In conclusion, a preliminary approach utilizing plasma treated BC membrane forenzyme immobilizion is established, which takes advantage of affinity and naturalnetwork structure of BC as well as activating ability of plasma treatment for covalentbinding. This principle has applicability and may have great promise and potential forimmobilizing other enzymes or micro-organisms to form a multi-enzyme or microbialsystem.