An Affinity Chromatographic Reactor for Highly Efficient Turnover of Dissociable Cofactors

A conjugated enzyme system of alcool dehydrogenase and lactate dehydrogenase was immobilized in an ultrafiltration hollow fiber tube, which was inserted in a fine nylon tube to form a hollow-fiber-capillary reactor. To this reactor, the substrates, pyruvate and ethanol, were supplied continuously. The necessary cofactor, NAD, was supplied as a pulse for a short time. The retention time of NAD in the reactor, estimated from the response curve of lactate produced, was much longer than those of the other substrates and products because of the strong adsorption of NAD to the immobilized enzymes through affinity. Therefore, the reactor could produce lactate from pyruvate for a long time without any more NAD. As a typical case, when the enzyme concentration is sufficiently high, the estimated retention time of NAD was 50 times as long as those of other materials so that the NAD turnover obtained was 412,000. The effects of NAD pulse concentration and the immobilized enzyme concentration on the retention time of NAD and NAD turnover were investigated experimentally and theoretically.