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problems, such as operation conditions or reaction equilibrium
(Berger, Laumen, & Schneider, 1992; Rosu, Yasui, Iwasaki, & Ya-
mane, 1999; Watanabe et al., 2003), whilst research on the key
problem, the improvement of the heat resistance, activity and
operational stability in the system of solvent-free glycerol/FFA
esterification of the biocatalyst, has never been reported. In this
work, common commercially available lipases were screened,
and MjL (Mucor javanicus lipase) was selected because it performed
better. To enhance its performance further, MjL was covalently
bound to surface activated NSM (nano-sized magnetite) particles
and later cross-linked to form a CLEA (cross-linked enzyme aggre-
gate) coating structure. The resulting nano-sized magnetite immo-
bilised lipase was used as catalyst for preparing 1,3-DAGs of lauric,
tein in the supernatant was determined by the Bradford method
(Bradford, 1976) using BSA (bovine serum albumin) as a standard.
To investigate influence of pH’s on immobilisation, PBS solu-
tions at pH 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 were used. To investigate protein con-
centration’s influence, a series of MjL solution were used, whose
concentration ranged between 0 and 16 (mg protein)mLꢀ1 were
used.
2.4. Esterification of the fatty acids
Esterification of free fatty acid and glycerol was used to prepare
1,3-DAG. The general equation of the reaction is as follows:
myristic, palmitic, stearic, oleic and linoleic acid (C12:0, C14:0, C16:0
,
C
18:0, C18:1 and C18:2), all with good yield (>90%) with shortened
RCOOH þ CH2OHCHOHCH2OH
! RCOOCH2CHOHCH2OCORð1; 3 ꢀ DAGÞ
reaction time (from 24 h to 8 h or less). The immobilised MjL was
able to be reused for 10 cycles at 55 °C with only a 10% loss of
activity. Thus, a highly efficient, widely usable and low-cost system
for the synthesis of 1,3-DAG has been established.
þ RCOOCH2CHOCORCH2OHð1; 2 ꢀ DAGÞ þ H2O
ð1Þ
where R – represents the carbon chain of fatty acids. The detail
reaction condition was: free fatty acid (100 mmol, approximately
20.0, 22.8, 25.6, 28.4, 28.2 and 28.0 g for lauric, myristic, palmitic,
stearic, oleic and linoleic acids, respectively), glycerol (50 mmol,
approximately 4.60 g), MjL (in native or immobilised form, 1 g),
and molecular sieves (4 Å, 10 g, for water removal) were adequately
mixed in a 50 mL conical flask at atmospheric pressure, and reacted
at 55 °C for lauric, oleic and linoleic acid, and 60, 65 and 70 °C for
myristic, palmitic and stearic acid (to reach the three fatty acids’
melting point), respectively, stirring at 200 rpm for 6–12 h. At
0.5 h of the reaction (during this time, conversion rate of FFA was
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Materials
GA (glutaraldehyde, 25% water solution), APTES ((3-aminopro-
pyl)triethoxysilane), glycerol, FFAs (free fatty acids: lauric, myris-
tic, palmitic, stearic, oleic and linoleic acid, all purity >98%) and
Candida rugosa lipase (aka CRL Type VII) were purchased from Sig-
ma-Aldrich Co.; lipases from Aspergillus niger, Pseudomonas fluores-
cens, M. javanicus, Rhizopus niveus, Burkholderia cepacia (aka Lipase
A, AK, M, N and PS, respectively) were purchased from Amano En-
zyme Inc.; native and immobilised lipase from Rhizomucor miehei
(aka Lipozyme RM and Lipozyme RM IM), together with immobi-
lised Candida antarctica lipase B (Novozym 435) were purchased
from Novozymes A/S. All other reagents referred in this article
were of analytical grade.
beneath 5%), 50 lL of the reactant was sampled to determine the
activity and selectivity.
2.5. Assay of lipase’s activity and selectivity
Esterification of glycerol and oleic acid (that is the case when
R- = CH3(CH2)7CH = CH(CH2)6CH2– in Eq. (1) was used as a model
reaction to assay lipase activity and selectivity. Activity of esterifi-
cation was defined as the initial consumption rate of oleic acid
2.2. Preparation of surface modified NSM
(
l
mol) per minute (when conversion was under 5%), that is, 1
Fe3O4 particles with a diameter of 10–20 nm were prepared by
coprecipitation (Molday, 1984), as shown in Fig. 1a-1, the NSM was
modified with APTES according to Ma’s work (Ma et al., 2003).
Afterwards, as shown in Fig. 1a-2, 1 g of the APTES modified
NSM, 2 mL of GA (25% aqueous solution) and 16 ml of PBS (phos-
phate buffer solution, 25 mmol Lꢀ1, pH = 7) were mixed and stirred
at 200 rpm and 25 °C for 2 h. The resulting solid was magnetically
UE = 1 (
l
mol oleic acid) minꢀ1. The specific activity of esterification
was based on the total protein content, that is, (specific activ-
ity) = (activity of esterification)/(total protein in the lipase powder
or loaded on the immobilisation carrier). Activity recovery = (total
esterification activity of the immobilised lipase)/(total esterifica-
tion activity of the lipase powder used for immobilisation)ꢁ100%.
The protein content of the lipase solution was determined accord-
ing to the Bradford method (Bradford, 1976), in which BSA was
used as protein standard. The amount of bound protein of immobi-
lised enzyme was indirectly determined by comparing the differ-
ence between the total amount of protein used and the amount
of protein in the washing solution.
separated by
a
strong magnet (N52 Nd-Fe-B magnet,
60 ꢁ 60 ꢁ 40 mm, Yantai Metal Material Company, Shanghai, Chi-
na), washed several times with PBS, and vacuum frozen for 12 h.
Finally, a dry powder of surface activated NSM was obtained.
2.3. Lipase immobilisation
In analogy to the ee value used for the description of enantio-
meric excess, a similar value for the regioisomeric excess was de-
fined: re = [(1,3-DAG)%ꢀ(1,2-DAG)%]/[(1,3-DAG)% + (1,2-DAG)%].
The larger the re value is, the more 1,3-selective the lipase is. FFA
and glycerides concentrations were determined by GC. The sample
was analysed using a HP 1890 gas chromatograph (Hewlett-Pack-
ard Co. CA, US) equipped with a FID detector and a DB-17ht capil-
lary column (30 m ꢁ 0.25 mm, Agilent Technologies Inc., CA, US).
Hydrogen was used as a carrier gas. Both the injector and detector
temperatures were 350 °C. The temperature program was as fol-
lows: initial temperature of 80 °C, then heating to 340 °C at
10 °C minꢀ1. The final temperature was 340 °C and was held for
15 min.
As shown in Fig. 1a-3, 1 g of activated NSM as prepared above
and 1000 mg of MjL crude powder (containing about 320 mg pro-
tein) was resolved in PBS (4 °C, 20 mL). The mixture was stirred
at 200 rpm at 4 °C for 12 h, at which point 0–2.4 mL of GA (25%
weight/weight) was added. This mixture was stirred for another
12 h to prepare CLEA as shown in Fig. 1b. Finally the insoluble solid
was magnetically separated from the mixture, washed several
times with PBS (pH = 7) to remove the unbound protein, and
freeze-dried for 12 h. The resulting immobilised lipase was kept
at 4 °C before use. The amount of lipase protein bound onto the
carrier was calculated by a mass balance. The amount of lipase pro-