Abstract
Researches on application of membranes to biotechnology are described relating with the production of useful substances. First, the applications of solid membranes are described, such as reactions using solid membranes with hydrophobic substrates, with regeneration of coenzymes and those related to enantioselectivity. Also, application to the plant cell membrane bioreactors and the analysis of pressure swing operation of membrane bioreactors are discussed.
Liquid membranes are interesting with respect to its application to the reactions combined with selective separation. Concepts of liquid membranes have been extended to reversed micelles which can be applied to separation of biomaterials such as proteins, peptides and amino acids. Bioaffinity extraction in biocompatible systems is presented. Finally, the author introduced some of the recent topics on applications of reversed micelles such as extractive separation of DNA, protein refolding and molecular imprinting at the oil/water interface.
