The development and application of a fluorescent excitation‐ratiometric, noninvasive pH sensor for continuous on‐line fermentation monitoring is presented. The ratiometric approach is robust and insensitive to factors such as source intensity, photobleaching, or orientation of the patch, and since measurements can be made with external instrumentation and without direct contact with the patch, detection is completely noninvasive. The fluorescent dye 8‐hydroxy‐1,3,6‐pyrene trisulfonic acid was immobilized onto Dowex strongly basic anion‐exchange resin, which was subsequently entrapped into a proton‐permeable hydrogel layer. The sensor layer was polymerized directly onto a white microfiltration membrane backing that provided an optical barrier to the fluorescence and scatter of the fermentation medium. The ratio of emission intensity at 515 nm excited at 468 nm to that excited at 408 nm correlated well with the pH of clear buffers, over the pH range of 6–9. The sensor responded rapidly (<9 min) and reversibly to changes in the solution pH with high precision. The sterilizable HPTS sensor was used for on‐line pH monitoring of an E. coli fermentation. The output from the indwelling sensor patch was always in good agreement with the pH recorded off‐line with an ISFET probe, with a maximum discrepancy of 0.05 pH units. The sensor is easily adaptable to closed‐loop feedback control systems.

Since its cloning and commercial availability, applications of green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a reporter gene have become prevalent in many aspects of science. The attributes of GFP could also be applied to the area of heterologous protein production. The work described here represents the first experiments to use GFP as a generic tool to monitor protein production in bioprocess development. We have constructed a plasmid containing an operon fusion of the two reporter genes GFP and chloramphenicol acetyl transferase (CAT) . CAT served as a “model” recombinant protein product to demonstrate the in situ quantifiable reporting mechanism of GFP. Our results indicate there is a direct correlation between the fluorescence intensity of GFP and the functional activity of the downstream CAT protein. In addition, there is a quantitative relationship between the level of CAT protein concentration and GFP fluorescence. These experiments provide the groundwork for using GFP as an in situ reporter gene for scale‐up and process optimization of recombinant protein production.