A structured model describing carbon and phosphate limited growth of Catharanthus roseus plant cell suspensions in batch and chemostat culture

Abstract

The growth of plant cell suspension cultures of Catharanthus roseus in batch fermentors was studied at different initial phosphate levels of the medium. On the basis of the observations and existing knowledge with respect to phosphate metabolism in cultured C. roseus cells, a structured mathematical model was developed for the description of the kinetics of growth and intracellular accumulation of glucose and phosphate, as a function of glucose and phosphate supply. It was shown that the model offers not only good description of the growth of the cells in batch culture at different initial phosphate levels, but also provided a satisfactory description of the growth in glucose limited chemostats.