One-step isolation of adenosine triphosphate from crude fermentation broth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae by anion-exchange chromatography using supermacroporous cryogel

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is an important high-energy compound widely used in biological and therapeutic fields. It can be produced by phosphorylation of adenosine monophosphate (AMP) with microbial cells in industrial scale and the effective isolation of ATP from microbial fermentation broth is a challenging work. In this work, we develop a novel one-step method to directly separate ATP from fermentation broth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae by anion-exchange chromatography using supermacroporous cryogel. The cryogel bed with tertiary amine groups was prepared by grafting N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) monomer chains onto the matrix of a polyacrylamide-based cryogel in a glass column and its properties of liquid dispersion, water permeability, porosity as well as the ligand density were measured. Chromatographic separation of ATP from the fermentation broth by the cryogel was carried out using deionised water and 0.01 M HCl as running buffer, respectively. The breakthrough characteristics and elution performance in the cryogel bed were revealed and analyzed. The purities of the obtained ATP were analyzed quantitatively by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The maximal purity of ATP by the one-step separation method was 95.5% using 0.01 M HCl as running buffer in this work. The corresponding chromatographic behaviors were investigated and analyzed.