Elaboration and chemical reactivity of enzyme modified ion exchanging textiles

Ion exchanging textile are used as organic supports for enzyme immobilisation with the aim of developing reactive fibrous materials able to be substituted for membrane systems in bioreactors or acting for instance as reactive bags for waste treatment devices, thus extending the range of their potential applications. The cationic or anionic sites of ion exchanging textiles are used for the enzyme immobilisation by classical chemical routes (chemical bonding) and by a biomimetic molecular recognition attachment process (complexation between biotin and avidin). As a result of the comparison between both processes used for enzyme immobilisation, the biomimetic route is shown to be much more efficient than the classical ones, improving by more than 10 times the enzyme specific activity and extending the lifetime to about 200 days. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.