Spring Semester 2004
Course Facilitators
Dr. Mark A. Eiteman
542-0833
408 Driftmier
eiteman@engr.uga.edu
Dr. Joy Peterson
542-4115
550 Biological Sciences
jpeterso@uga.edu
Course Assistants
Sarah Lee
542-7801
sarahlee@engr.uga.edu
Geoff Smith
542-7801
thedobhran@hotmail.com
Meeting Time
MW
2:30 - 4:25 p.m.
Room 213 Driftmier
Other laboratory times to be planned by student teams as needed
for the completion of a particular experiment.
Description of course
The course will be composed of 4-8 graduate students from engineering, microbiology and other life sciences. Teams will be assigned and membership will be "rotated" so that every student has the opportunity to be a team leader and be teamed with every other student. Students will be evaluated exclusively on written laboratory "proposals", oral presentations and final reports that are submitted. There will be no "homework" or examinations. For all five labs a written team proposal will be submitted and evaluated before the experiment is carried out.
Recommendations for writing laboratory reports
The planned laboratory experiences are:
1. Batch Anaerobic Fermentation of Escherichia coli. Students will conduct an anaerobic fermentation with a "wild-type" facultative microorganism. The educational objectives include selecting growth media, preparing media, using pH control, and maintaining anaerobic conditions. Students will gain an appreciation for chromatographic analysis of small organic compounds and be able to model cell growth kinetics, calculate product yields and perform carbon and redox balances.
2. Measurement of Oxygen Mass Transfer Coefficients. Students will use dynamic sparging without microorganisms to determine and understand the mass transfer coefficient, kLa. Educational objectives include determining the influence of physical and operational parameters such as agitation, air flowrate, fluid viscosity and impeller placemenet on kLa.
3. Continuous Fermentation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Students will conduct a chemostat to understand steady-state fermentation, a mode which permits the calculation of maintenance coefficient and cell yield coefficient. Students will also understand the condition of cell wash-out.
4. Fed-batch Aerobic Fermentation of Penicillium chrysogenum. Students will conduct an aerobic fungal fermentation to produce a secondary metabolite (penicillin G) by feeding a precurosor (phenylacetic acid) in a non-growth phase. The eductional objectives include understanding fed-batch processes and fungal morphology, and implementing an antibiotic activity assay.
5. Genetic Transformation of E. coli and Batch Anaerobic Fermentation of Transformed Microorganism. Students will transform wild-type E. coli with a plasmid containing Z. mobilis pyruvate decarboxylase and alcohol dehydrogenase genes. Education objectives include understanding transformation. By comparing the results of this fermentation with those of Experiment #1, students will appreciate the biochemical impact of this genetic perturbation, and complete a metabolic flux analysis of the two fermentations.