Introduction to High‐Pressure Bioscience and Biotechnology

Abstract

The manipulation of biological materials using elevated pressure is providing an ever-growing number of opportunities in both the applied and basic sciences. Manipulation of pressure is a useful parameter for enhancing food quality and shelf life; inactivating microbes, viruses, prions, and deleterious enzymes; affecting recombinant protein production; controlling DNA hybridization; and improving vaccine preparation. In biophysics and biochemistry, pressure is used as a tool to study intermediates in protein folding, enzyme kinetics, macromolecular interactions, amyloid fibrous protein aggregation, lipid structural changes, and to discern the role of solvation and void volumes in these processes. Biologists, including many microbiologists, examine the utility and basis of pressure inactivation of cells and cellular processes, and conversely seek to discover how deep-sea life has evolved a preference for high-pressure environments. This introduction and the papers that follow provide information on the nature and promise of the highly interdisciplinary field of high-pressure bioscience and biotechnology (HPBB).

Photobacterium profundum under Pressure: A MS-Based Label-Free Quantitative Proteomics Study

“…The transport of small molecules and membrane transporters are affected by changes in hydrostatic pressure [2]. We have identified a number of significantly differentially expressed ABC transporters, which were involved in ion, sugar and amino acid transporters across the cell membrane.…”

“…This is due to the difficulty of isolating and culturing them in a high pressure environment [1]. Understanding the biochemical mechanisms governing how they have adapted to live under high pressure may yield significant biotechnological and industrial applications [2].…”

Molecular determinant of the effects of hydrostatic pressure on protein folding stability

“…Bacterial species have been isolated from 1,351 m into the Earth's crust where temperatures reach 102 °C and pressure is estimated to be in excess of 3,000 atm 7 8 . There are also reports of prokaryotic organisms at the bottom of oil well sediments and deep in the Arctic ice 9 .…”

Optimization Of Extraction Parameters For Folic Acid And Antioxidant Compounds From An Edible Plant (Polygonum Cognatum Meissn) Using Pressurized Liquid Extraction (PLE) System

“…Operation pressure directly influenced the amount of folic acid extracted which significantly increased up to 1500 psi (Fig 1-D). It is well known by means of the published articles that high pressures can cause to some changes on cell membrane permeability and intracellular organelle structural (30). The resulting solubilization of intracellular substances (metal ions, proteins etc.)…”