Introduction to session 2

Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology -     

Development of a novel laboratory scale high solids reactor for anaerobic digestion of processed municipal solid wastes for the production of methane

Economic evaluations of the capital costs for anaerobic digestion systems for gas production show that the reactor is a significant cost component. The successful application of high solids digestion of processed MSW (e.g., greater than 10% solids within the digester) would allow a decrease in reactor volume with maintenance of relatively high gas production rates. However, high solids slurries do not mix well in conventional stirred tank reactors. A horizontal shaft, hydraulically driven reactor was designed and fabricated to test the anaerobic digestion of high solids concentrations. Digester performance was evaluated as a function of experimental parameters such as nutrient requirements, feeding rates, pH control, and agitator design/ rotation speed; horsepower of mixing was also evaluated for the reactor. Several startup protocols were examined to obtain a biologically stable anaerobic fermentation at high solids levels.     

The role of ester groups in resistance of plant cell wall polysaccharides to enzymatic hydrolysis

Xylan backbones in native plant cell walls are extensively acety-lated. Previously, no direct investigations as to their role in cellulolytic enzyme resistance have been done, though indirect results point to their importance. An in vitro deesterification of aspen wood and wheat straw has been completed using hydroxylamine solutions. Yields of 90% acetyl ester removal for both materials have been accomplished, with little disruption of other fractions (i.e., lignin). Apparently, as the xylan becomes increasingly deacetylated, it becomes 5–7 times more digestible. This renders the cellulose fraction more accessible, and 2–3 times more digestible. This effect levels off near an acetyl removal of 75%, where other resistances become limiting.     

Carbohydrate-binding module O-mannosylation alters binding selectivity to cellulose and lignin

Improved understanding of the effect of protein glycosylation is expected to provide the foundation for the design of protein glycoengineering strategies. In this study, we examine the impact of O-glycosylation on the binding selectivity of a model Family 1 carbohydrate-binding module (CBM), which has been shown to be one of the primary sub-domains responsible for non-productive lignin binding in multi-modular cellulases. Specifically, we examine the relationship between glycan structure and the binding specificity of the CBM to cellulose and lignin substrates. We find that the glycosylation pattern of the CBM exhibits a strong influence on the binding affinity and the selectivity between both cellulose and lignin. In addition, the large set of binding data collected allows us to examine the relationship between binding affinity and the correlation in motion between pairs of glycosylation sites. Our results suggest that glycoforms displaying highly correlated motion in their glycosylation sites tend to bind cellulose with high affinity and lignin with low affinity. Taken together, this work helps lay the groundwork for future exploitation of glycoengineering as a tool to improve the performance of industrial enzymes.

Improved understanding of the effect of protein glycosylation is expected to provide the foundation for the design of protein glycoengineering strategies.

The cell walls of terrestrial plants primarily comprise the polysaccharides cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin, as well as the heterogeneous aromatic polymer, lignin. In nature, carbohydrates derived from plant polysaccharides provide a massive carbon and energy source for biomass-degrading fungi, bacteria, and archaea, which together are the primary organisms that recycle plant matter and are a critical component of the global carbon cycle. Across the various environments in which these microbes break down lignocellulose, a few known enzymatic and chemical systems have evolved to deconstruct polysaccharides to soluble sugars.^1–6 These natural systems are, in several cases, being evaluated for industrial use to produce sugars for further conversion into renewable biofuels and chemicals.From an industrial perspective, overcoming biomass recalcitrance to cost-effectively produce soluble intermediates, including sugars for further upgrading remains the main challenge in biomass conversion. Lignin, the evolution of which in planta provided a significant advantage for terrestrial plants to mitigate microbial attack, is now widely recognized as a primary cause of biomass recalcitrance.⁷ Chemical and/or biological processing scenarios of lignocellulose have been evaluated⁸ and several approaches have been scaled to industrial biorefineries to date. Many biomass conversion technologies overcome recalcitrance by partially or wholly removing lignin from biomass using thermochemical pretreatment or fractionation. This approach enables easier polysaccharide access for carbohydrate-active enzymes and/or microbes. There are however, several biomass deconstruction approaches that employ enzymes or microbes with whole, unpretreated biomass.^9,10 In most realistic biomass conversion scenarios wherein enzymes or microbes are used to depolymerize polysaccharides, native or residual lignin remains.^11,12 It is important to note that lignin can bind and sequester carbohydrate-active enzymes, which in turn can affect conversion performance.¹³Therefore, efforts aimed at improving cellulose binding selectivity relative to lignin have emerged as major thrusts in cellulase studies.^14–25 Multiple reports in the past a few years have made exciting new contributions to our collective understanding of how fungal glycoside hydrolases, which are among the most well-characterized cellulolytic enzymes given their importance to cellulosic biofuels production, bind to lignin from various pretreatments.^15,17 Taken together, these studies have demonstrated that the Family 1 carbohydrate-binding modules (CBMs) often found in fungal cellulases are the most relevant sub-domains for non-productive binding to lignin,^15,17,20,26 likely due to the hydrophobic face of these CBMs that is known to be also responsible for cellulose binding (Fig. 1).²⁷Open in a separate windowFig. 1Model of glycosylated CBM binding the surface of a cellulose crystal. Glycans are shown in green with oxygen atoms in red, tyrosines known to be critical to binding shown in purple, and disulfide bonds Cys8–Cys25 and Cys19–Cys35 in yellow.Furthermore, several studies have been published recently using protein engineering of Family 1 CBMs to improve CBM binding selectivity to cellulose with respect to lignin. Of particular note, Strobel et al. screened a large library of point mutations in both the Family 1 CBM and the linker connecting the catalytic domain (CD) and CBM.^21,22 These studies demonstrated that several mutations in the CBM and one in the linker led to improved cellulose binding selectivity compared to lignin. The emerging picture is that the CBM-cellulose interaction, which occurs mainly as a result of stacking between the flat, hydrophobic CBM face (which is decorated with aromatic residues) and the hydrophobic crystal face of cellulose I, is also likely the main driving force in the CBM-lignin interaction given the strong potential for aromatic–aromatic and hydrophobic interactions.Alongside amino acid changes, modification of O-glycosylation has recently emerged as a potential tool in engineering fungal CBMs, which Harrison et al. demonstrated to be O-glycosylated.^28–31 In particular, we have revealed that the O-mannosylation of a Family 1 CBM of Trichoderma reesei cellobiohydrolase I (TrCel7A) can lead to significant enhancements in the binding affinity towards bacterial microcrystalline cellulose (BMCC).^30,32,33 This observation, together with the fact that glycans have the potential to form both hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions with other molecules, led us to hypothesize that glycosylation may have a unique role in the binding selectivity of Family 1 CBMs to cellulose relative to lignin and as such, glycoengineering may be exploited to improve the industrial performance of these enzymes. To test this hypothesis, in the present study, we systematically probed the effects of glycosylation on CBM binding affinity for a variety of lignocellulose-derived cellulose and lignin substrates and investigated routes to computationally predict the binding properties of different glycosylated CBMs.     

Low-lying electronic states of the Ti2 dimer: electronic absorption spectroscopy in rare gas matrices in concert with quantum chemical calculations

Absorption spectra were measured for Ti2 in Ne and Ar matrices. The spectra give evidence for several electronic transitions in the region between 4000 and 10 000 cm(-1) and provide important information about some excited electronic states of Ti2 in proximity to the ground state. The vibrational fine structure measured for these transitions allowed to calculate the force constants and the anharmonicity of the potential energy curves of the excited states, and to estimate changes in the internuclear Ti-Ti distances relative to the electronic ground state. The quantum chemical studies confirm the previously suggested (3)Delta(g) state as the ground state of Ti2. The equilibrium bond distance is calculated to be 195.4 pm. The calculated harmonic frequency of 432 cm(-1) is in good agreement with the experimental value of 407.0 cm(-1). With the aid of the calculations it was possible to assign the experimentally observed transitions in the region between 4000 and 10 000 cm(-1) to the 1 (3)Pi(u)<--(3)Delta(g), 1 (3)Phi(u)<--(3)Delta(g), 2 (3)Pi(u)<--(3)Delta(g), 2 (3)Phi(u)<--(3)Delta(g), and (3)Delta(u)<--(3)Delta(g) excitations (in the order of increasing energy). The calculated relative energies and harmonic frequencies are in pleasing agreement with the experimentally obtained values, with deviations of less than 5% and 2%, respectively. The bond distances estimated on the basis of the experimental spectra tally satisfactorily with the predictions of our calculations.     

Quantitation of hypoxanthine in plasma from patients with ischemic heart disease: adaption of a high-performance liquid chromatographic method.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method is described for the separation and quantitation of several purine compounds, including hypoxanthine. The isocratic separation of a standard mixture of nine compounds is achieved within 20 min on a reversed-phase Nucleosil 100-5C18 column, with a mobile phase of KH2PO4 (300 mM, pH 4.0)-methanol-acetonitrile-tetrahydrofuran (97.9:1:1:0.1, v/v). Uric acid, guanine, hypoxanthine, uridine, xanthine, allopurinol, inosine, guanosine and 7-methylxanthine were almost completely baseline-separated, with detection limits in the range 0.5-1.2 pmol per injection. The influence of the concentrations of buffer and tetrahydrofuran on the quality of separation are described. The within-day and the day-to-day precision were satisfactory (e.g. coefficients of variation of less than 1.5 and ca. 6.0%, respectively, for peak heights). The recovery of [3H]hypoxanthine added to samples was 86 +/- 1%. Hypoxanthine was quantified in human plasma samples obtained at various times during coronary artery bypass grafting. The hypoxanthine levels measured immediately after release of the aortic cross-clamp were significantly higher than those determined under control conditions (18.8 +/- 7.0 and 3.4 +/- 1.0 microM, respectively).     

Measurements and Utilization of Consistent Gibbs Energies of Transfer of Single Ions: Towards a Unified Redox Potential Scale for All Solvents

Utilizing the “ideal” ionic liquid salt bridge to measure Gibbs energies of transfer of silver ions between the solvents water, acetonitrile, propylene carbonate and dimethylformamide results in a consistent data set with a precision of 0.6 kJ mol⁻¹ over 87 measurements in 10 half-cells. This forms the basis for a coherent experimental thermodynamic framework of ion solvation chemistry. In addition, we define the solvent independent - and the values that account for the electronating potential of any redox system similar to the value of a medium that accounts for its protonating potential. This scale is thermodynamically well-defined enabling a straightforward comparison of the redox potentials (reducities) of all media with respect to the aqueous redox potential scale, hence unifying all conventional solvents′ redox potential scales. Thus, using the Gibbs energy of transfer of the silver ion published herein, one can convert and unify all hitherto published redox potentials measured, for example, against ferrocene, to the scale.     

1,1,3,3-Tetramethylguanidine-gallane, (Me2N)2CN(H).GaH3: an unusually strongly bound gallane adduct

The novel adduct 1,1,3,3-tetramethylguanidine-gallane, (Me2N)2CN(H).GaH3, has been prepared by the reaction of [(Me2N)2CNH2]+Cl- with LiGaH4 in Et2O solution. Its spectroscopic properties indicate a monomeric species with an unusually strong coordinate link between the imido function and GaH3, an inference confirmed by the crystal structure at 150 K which also reveals significant secondary interactions through non-classical N-H...H-Ga bridges. Despite the intrinsic strength of the Ga-N bond, however, vaporisation at ca. 310 K occurs with partial dissociation, and decomposition via more than one pathway proceeds at temperatures >330-350 K to give a variety of products, including the free base, Me2NH, H2, and a novel gallium-nitrogen compound composed of a Ga4N4 cubane-like core bridged on three edges by -N{C(NMe2)2}GaH2- units.     

Cloning and expression of full-lengthTrichoderma reesi cellobiohydrolase I cDNAs inEscherichia coli

The process of converting lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol via fermentation depends on developing economic sources of cellulases.Trichoderma reesei cellobiohydrolase (CBH) I is a key enzyme in the fungal cellulase system; however, specific process application requirements make modification of the enzyme by site-directed mutagenesis (SDM) an attractive goal. To undertake SDM investigations, an efficient, cellulase-free host is required. To test the potential ofEscherichia coli as a host, T.reesei CBH I cDNA was expressed inE. coli strain GI 724 as a C-terminal fusion to thermostable thioredoxin protein. Full-length expression of CBH I was subsequently verified by molecular weight, Western blot analysis, and activity on soluble substrates.

     

Bildung siliciumorganischer Verbindungen. 73. Reaktionen C-chlorierter 1,3-Disilapropane mit CH3MgCl

Formation of Organosilicon Compounds. 73. Reactions of C-chlorinated 1,3-Disilapropanes with CH₃MgCl (Cl₃Si)₂CCl₂ reacts with an excess of meMgCl (me = CH₃) in Et₂O (diethylether) forming (me₃Si)₂₂C?CH₂ mainly besides Si-methylated 1,3-disilapropanes with CmeCl, CHCl, CH₂ groups [6]. For investigating the mechanism of formation of the methylidengroup reactions were carried out with differently Si-methylated and Si-chlorinated 2-methyl-1-2-chloro-1,3-disilapropanes and 2,2-dichloro-1,3-disilapropanes. Whereas (me₃Si)₂CmeCl reacts neither with meMgCl nor with Lime. it forms (me₃Si)₂C?CH₂ and (me₃Si)₂CmeH with Li or Mg resp. The reaction starts with the metallation to (me₃Si)₂CmeLi and (me₃Si)₂Cme(MgCl) resp., followed by elimination of LiH and HMgCl resp. with formation of (me₃Si)₂C?CH₂. LiH and HMgCl resp. reduces (me₃Si)₂CmeCl to (me₃Si)₂CmeH. This mechanism is supported by the reactions of (me₃Si)₂CCl(CD₃). The Si-chlorination increases the reactivity of the CmeCl group and the created C?CH₂ group favours Si-methylation. The CCl₂ group is more reactive than the CmeCl group; (me₃Si)₂CCl₂ already forms the methyliden group with meMgCl in Et₂O via the not isolated intermediate (me₃Si)₂CCl(MgCl). which prefers the methylation to (me₃Si)₂Cme(MgCl). The n.m.r. data of the investigated compounds are given.