Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, No. 1 East Jianshe Road, Zhengzhou, Henan Province 450052, China.
J Biosci Bioeng. 2013 Oct;116(4):452-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jbiosc.2013.04.004. Epub 2013 May 23.
Erlenmeyer flask or conical flask, usually made of glass, is widely used for laboratory scale suspension culture of microorganism, such as Escherichia Coli and yeast. Due to being non-disposable culture vessel, it has to be cleaned, packaged and sterilized prior to use, which are time, labor and energy consuming work, and has the potential risk of cross-contamination. Despite the rigid plastic conical flasks are possible for single use, they are not economically effective and produce more waste. To overcome these drawbacks, here we successfully developed a novel disposable flexible bioreactor with a plastic film through a thermo-fusion technique. With a triangular pyramid shape, the bioreactor enabled itself to keep a three-dimensional internal space without needing air inflation and well adapted to the commercial available orbital shaker. Unlike the conventional rigid conical flasks and other reported flexible flasks, which had to be fixed in the shaker, the flexible bioreactor could keep sitting on the silicone pad-carpeted platform of the orbital shaker steadily without any fixation needed at the shaking speeds below 250 rpm, thus making it simple to handle. Compared with the traditional conical glass flasks, the innovative flexible bioreactors achieved a significant higher efficiency in bacteria growth and oxygen transfer rates. In conclusion, the novel flexible bioreactor is an ideal disposable culture vessel for microorganism suspension culture at laboratory scale and holds a promising potential to replace the glass flask and rigid plastic flask in the future.
锥形瓶或摇瓶，通常由玻璃制成，广泛用于微生物的实验室规模悬浮培养，如大肠杆菌和酵母。由于是非一次性培养容器，在使用前必须进行清洗、包装和消毒，这是一项耗时、耗力和耗能的工作，并且存在交叉污染的潜在风险。尽管刚性塑料锥形瓶可用于一次性使用，但它们在经济上并不划算，并且会产生更多的废物。为了克服这些缺点，我们成功地开发了一种新型的一次性柔性生物反应器，它采用热融合技术，由塑料薄膜制成。该生物反应器呈三角锥形，能够保持三维内部空间，无需充气，并且很好地适应商业上可用的轨道摇床。与传统的刚性锥形瓶和其他报道的柔性瓶不同，后者必须在摇床中固定，而柔性生物反应器可以在摇床速度低于 250rpm 时稳定地坐在轨道摇床的硅胶垫地毯平台上，无需任何固定，因此操作简单。与传统的锥形玻璃瓶相比，创新的柔性生物反应器在细菌生长和氧气传递速率方面效率显著提高。总之，新型柔性生物反应器是一种理想的微生物悬浮培养一次性培养容器，具有替代玻璃瓶和刚性塑料瓶的潜力。
