Species selection for the design of gold nanobioreactor by photosynthetic organisms

The design of cell-based bioreactors for inorganic particles formation requires both a better understanding of the underlying processes and the identification of most suitable organisms. With this purpose, the process of Au3+ incorporation, intracellular reduction, and Au0 nanoparticle release in the culture medium was compared for four photosynthetic microorganisms, Klebsormidium flaccidum and Cosmarium impressulum green algae, Euglena gracilis euglenoid and Anabaena flos-aquae cyanobacteria. At low gold content, the two green algae show maintained photosynthetic activity and recovered particles (ca. 10 nm in size) are similar to internal colloids, indicating a full biological control over the whole process. In similar conditions, the euglenoid exhibits a rapid loss of biological activity, due to the absence of protective extracellular polysaccharide, but could grow again after an adaptation period. This results in a larger particle size dispersity but larger reduction yield. The cyanobacteria undergo rapid cell death, due to their prokaryotic nature, leading to high gold incorporation rate but poor control over released particle size. Similar observations can be made after addition of a larger gold salt concentration when all organisms rapidly die, suggesting that part of the process is not under biological control anymore but also involves extracellular chemical reactions. Overall, fruitful information on the whole biocrystallogenesis process is gained and most suitable species for further bioreactor design can be identified, i.e., green algae with external coating.