A morphologically structured model for penicillin production.

A morphologically structured model is proposed to describe penicillin production in fed-batch cultivations. The model accounts for the effects of dissolved oxygen on cell growth and penicillin production and variations in volume fractions of abiotic and biotic phases due to biomass formation. Penicillin production is considered to occur in the subapical hyphal cell compartment and to be affected by availability of glucose and oxygen. As it stands, the model provides a wide range of applicability in terms of operating conditions. The model has been tested for various conditions and has given satisfactory results. A series of glucose feeding profiles have been considered to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed model. It is concluded that the model may be valuable for the interpretation of experimental data collected specifically for metabolic flux analysis during fed-batch cultivation because the elements of measured specific production rates are determined from measurements of the concentrations of the components and their mass balances. The proposed model may be further used for developing control strategies and model order reduction algorithms.