“BIOMATERIALS: Chlorella spp. CELLS GROWTH INSIDE SILICA MATRICES”

MERCEDES PERULLINI; SARA A. BILMES; MATÍAS JOBBÁGY; MARÍA MERCEDES RIVERO; ALEJANDRO MENTABERRY

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Congreso; BAIRESBIOTECH2005 - Congreso Internacional Grupo Biotecnología - REDBIO; 2005

REDBIO Argentina

In the recent years many attention has been focused in the sol-gel encapsulation of whole cells I, with a wide range of applications such as bioremediation devices, biosensors and bioreactors II. Individual cells entrapped in silica matrices were shown to keep their viability and to remain metabolically active, but confinement unabled them to make cellular division. III This limitation was overcomed recently in our group by a novel sol-gel synthesis strategy to allow cell division inside silica monoliths. In the present work we show the application of this procedure to the encapsulation of Chlorella sp. cells and their culture inside silica matrices.