Some natural substances are impossible to produce directly using one strain of microorganisms; they have to be produced via one or more intermediates requiring the use of different production strains. After each separate production process, downstream processing of the product is necessary to prepare the substrate for another production step. In this work, two step bioproduction of phenylacetic acid from L-phenylalanine through precursor 2-phenylethanol was performed using a dual reactor membrane hybrid system. This hybrid system consisted of two bioreactors mutually interconnected with immersed capillary membrane modules used for precursor transport between the bioreactors. In the first bioreactor, 2-phenylethanol was produced by the yeast strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae; in the second bioreactor, 2-phenylethanol was transformed by the bacterial strain Gluconobacter oxydans. Extraction capability of the hybrid system was tested by a series of membrane extraction experiments. In such a system, biotransformation experiments with 2-phenylethanol bioproduction from L-phenylalanine and its biotransformation to phenylacetic acid in non-growth conditions were carried out using free cells of Gluconobacter oxydans and the cells immobilized in lenticular LentiKats (R) particles. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.