Encapsulation of animal and microbial cells in an inorganic gel prepared

Abstract

Living animal tissue cells and microbial cells such as yeast cells are encapsulated in an inorganic gel prepared from an organosilicon. Encapsulation of tissue cells is performed by mixing an organosilicon precursor with a highly acidic aqueous solution to hydrolyze the organosilicon precursor and provide a gel forming solution, cooling the gel forming solution, forming a mixture of living tissue cells and Hank's balanced salt solution, adding a base solution to the gel forming solution, immediately thereafter adding the mixture containing tissue cells to the gel forming solution, and pouring the resultant mixture into a container where an inorganic gel forms encapsulating the tissue cells. The organosilicon precursor may be tetraethoxysilane, tetrabutoxysilane, tetramethoxysilane or tetrapropoxysilane. Microbial cells are encapsulated by a similar procedure where a gel forming solution is prepared by adding a base to a solution resulting from hydrolyzing an organosilicon with a highly acidic aqueous solution, a microbial cell dispersion is mixed with the gel forming solution and the resultant mixture is poured into a container to form an inorganic gel encapsulating the microbial cells.