Abstract: The biocatalytic activity of 13 yeast strains was compared for the synthesis of 2-phenylethanol, and a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain that had high biocatalytic activity was screened out. The experiments of single factor and orthogonal design were carried out to optimize the composition of the medium for the biosynthesis of 2-phenylethanol. The results showed that the concentration of 2-phenylethanol could reach 4.654 g/L with a molar yield of 0.63 in the optimized medium. Furthermore, a model of polynomial regressive equation between the 2-phenylethanol concentration and main components in the medium was established after the Box-Behnken central composite design and response surface methodology were put into practice. The model exhibited fine exactitude and provided a predictive model for optimizing the medium in the biocatalytic synthesis of 2-phenylethanol. Response surface analysis was applied to optimize the medium constituents, and upon applying the optimized medium, the maximum 2-phenylethanol concentration of 4.815 g/L was achieved in testing experiment.

Key words: 2-phenylethanol, biocatalysis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, perfume