Evaluation of the enzymatic susceptibility of cellulosic substrates using specific hydrolysis rates and enzyme adsorption

Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology - Adsorption of cellulases to cellulose is a critical step in the hydrolysis of cellulosic substrates. However, the importance of adsorption in determining...     

The effect of enzyme and substrate levels on the specific hydrolysis rate of pretreated poplar wood

Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology - The hydrolysis of pretreated poplar wood was carried out with initial concentrations of 1.26, 2.52, 5.04 mg proteinJmL of GC123Trichoderma reesei. cellulase...     

On the rate of hydrolysis of trimethylphenoxysilane

Trimethylphenoxysilane is shown to undergo hydrolysis rapidly in 96% ethanol at ambient temperature; therefore ethanol is unsuitable for taking UV absorption spectra of Me₃SiOPh.     

On the use of counterpropagation artificial neural networks to characterize Italian rice varieties

A counterpropagation artificial neural network (CP-ANN) approach was used to classify 1779 Italian rice samples according to their variety, using physical measurements which are routinely determined for the commercial classification of the product. If compared to the classical Principal Component Analysis, the mapping based on the Kohonen network showed a significantly better representational ability, being able to separate classes which appeared quite undistinguished in the PC space. From the classification and prediction viewpoint, the optimal CP-ANN was able to correctly predict more than 90% of the test set samples.     

Cellulase adsorption and an evaluation of enzyme recycle during hydrolysis of steam-exploded softwood residues

The sugar yield and enzyme adsorption profile obtained during the hydrolysis of SO₂-catalyzed steam-exploded Douglas-fir and posttreated steamexploded Douglas-fir substrates were determined. After hot alkali peroxide posttreatment, the rates and yield of hydrolysis attained from the posttreated Douglas-fir were significantly higher, even at lower enzyme loadings, than those obtained with the corresponding steam-exploded Douglas-fir. The enzymatic adsorption profiles observed during hydrolysis of the two substrates were significantly different. Ultrafiltration was employed to recover enzyme in solution (supernatant) and reused in subsequent hydrolysis reactions with added, fresh substrate. These recycle findings suggested that the enzyme remained relatively active for three rounds of recycle. It is likely that enzyme recovery and reuse during the hydrolysis of posttreated softwood substrates could lead to reductions in the need for the addition of fresh enzyme during softwood-based bioconversion processes.     

Kinetics of enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials based on surface area of cellulose accessible to enzyme and enzyme adsorption on lignin and cellulose

Comparison of the model with experimental data is currently in progress. It appears that more detailed studies of the adsorption dynamics, not just adsorption equilibrium, are needed.     

Molecular simulation to characterize the adsorption behavior of a fibrinogen gamma-chain fragment

Implants invoke inflammatory responses from the body even if they are chemically inert and nontoxic. It has been shown that a crucial precedent event in the inflammatory process is the spontaneous adsorption of fibrinogen (Fg) on implant surfaces, which is typically followed by the presence of phagocytic cells. Interactions between the phagocyte integrin Mac-1 and two short sequences within the fibrinogen gamma chain, gamma190-202 and gamma377-395, may partially explain phagocyte accumulation at implant surfaces. These two sequences are believed to form an integrin binding site that is inaccessible when Fg is in its soluble-state structure but then becomes available for Mac-1 binding following adsorption, presumably due to adsorption-induced conformational changes. The objective of this research was to theoretically investigate this possibility by using molecular dynamics simulations of the gamma-chain fragment of Fg over self-assembled monolayer (SAM) surfaces presenting different types of surface chemistry. The GROMACS software package was used to carry out the molecular simulations in an explicit solvation environment over a 5 ns period of time. The adsorption of the gamma-chain of fibrinogen was simulated on five types of SAM surfaces. The simulations showed that this protein fragment exhibits distinctly different adsorption behavior on the different surface chemistries. Although the trajectory files showed that significant conformational changes did not occur in this protein fragment over the time frame of the simulations, it was predicted that the protein does undergo substantial rotational and translational motions over the surface prior to stabilizing in various preferred orientations. This suggests that the kinetics of surface-induced conformational changes in a protein's structure might be much slower than the kinetics of orientational changes, thus enabling the principles of adsorption thermodynamics to be used to guide adsorbing proteins into defined orientations on surfaces before large conformational changes can occur. This finding may be very important for biomaterial surface design as it suggests that surface chemistry can potentially be used to directly control the orientation of adsorbing proteins in a manner that either presents or hides specific bioactive sites contained within a protein's structure, thereby providing a mechanism to control cellular responses to the adsorbed protein layer.     

Ozone pretreatment and fermentative hydrolysis of wheat straw

Principles of the ozone pretreatment of wheat straw for subsequent fermentation into sugars are investigated. The optimum moisture contents of straw in the ozonation process are obtained from data on the kinetics of ozone absorbed by samples with different contents of water. The dependence of the yield of reducing sugars in the fermentative reaction on the quantity of absorbed ozone is established. The maximum conversion of polysaccharides is obtained at ozone doses of around 3 mmol/g of biomass, and it exceeds the value for nonozonated samples by an order of magnitude. The yield of sugar falls upon increasing the dose of ozone. The process of removing lignin from the cell walls of straw during ozonation is visualized by means of scanning electron microscopy.     

Impacts of delignification and hot water pretreatment on the water induced cell wall swelling behavior of grasses and its relation to cellulolytic enzyme hydrolysis and binding

The relationships between biomass composition, water retention value (WRV), settling volume and enzymatic glucose yield and enzyme binding is investigated in this work by employing grasses pretreated with combinations of alkaline hydrogen peroxide (AHP) delignification and liquid hot water pretreatment that result in significant alterations of cell wall properties and subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis yields. Specifically, these cell wall treatments are performed on corn stover and switchgrass to generate material with a range of lignin (6–35 %) and xylan (2–28 %) contents as well as a range of other properties such as carboxylic acid content, water binding affinity and swellability. It was determined that WRV and settling volume are predictors of glucose yield (R² = 0.900 and 0.895 respectively) over the range of materials and treatment conditions used. It was also observed that mild AHP delignification can result in threefold increases in the WRV. Dynamic vapor sorption isotherms demonstrated that AHP-delignified corn stover exhibited an increased affinity for water sorption from the vapor phase relative to untreated corn stover. These results indicate that these water properties may be useful proxies for biomass susceptibility to enzymatic deconstruction.     

Mitigation of cellulose recalcitrance to enzymatic hydrolysis by ionic liquid pretreatment

Efficient hydrolysis of cellulose-to-glucose is critically important in producing fuels and chemicals from renewable feedstocks. Cellulose hydrolysis in aqueous media suffers from slow reaction rates because cellulose is a water-insoluble crystalline biopolymer. The high-crystallinity of cellulose fibrils renders the internal surface of cellulose inaccessible to the hydrolyzing enzymes (cellulases) as well as water. Pretreatment methods, which increase the surface area accessible to water and cellulases are vital to improving the hydrolysis kinetics and conversion of cellulose to glucose. In a novel technique, the microcrystalline cellulose was first subjected to an ionic liquid (IL) treatment and then recovered as essentially amorphous or as a mixture of amorphous and partially crystalline cellulose by rapidly quenching the solution with an antisolvent. Because of their extremely low-volatility, ILs are expected to have minimal environmental impact. Two different ILs, 1-n-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (BMIMC1) and 1-allyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (AMIMC1) were investigated. Hydrolysis kinetics of the IL-treated cellulose is significantly enhanced. With appropriate selection of IL treatment conditions and enzymes, the initial hydrolysis rates for IL-treated cellulose were up to 90 times greater than those of untreated cellulose. We infer that this drastic improvement in the "overall hydrolysis rates" with IL-treated cellulose is mainly because of a significant enhancement in the kinetics of the "primary hydrolysis step" (conversion of solid cellulose to soluble oligomers), which is the rate-limiting step for untreated cellulose. Thus, with IL-treated cellulose, primary hydrolysis rates increase and become comparable with the rates of inherently faster "secondary hydrolysis" (conversion of soluble oligomers to glucose).     

On the specific adsorption of anions from solutions of low ionic strength

The specific adsorption of anions at positive electrodes from solutions of low ionic strength is examined on the basis of the electrostatic (Stern-Levine) model for specific ionic adsorption. It is shown that as the ionic strength is decreased, the adsorbed charge density falls below the electronic charge density on the metal; for these conditions, high positive potentials are expected at the outer Helmholtz plane. The above model predicts that there is no extended potential region where the diffuse-layer charge is zero. Difficulties in estimating the potential drop across the diffuse layer in dilute solutions are discussed and a possible defect in the simple application of the Stern-Levine model pointed out.     

Cellulose and hemicellulose hydrolysis models for application to current and novel pretreatment processes

Acids catalyze the hydrolysis of cellulose and hemicellulose to produce sugars that organisms can ferment to ethanol and other products. However, advanced low- and no-acid technologies are critical if we are to reduce bioethanol costs to be competitive as a pure fuel. We believe carbohy drate oligomers play a key role in explaining the performance of such hydrolysis processes and that kinetic models would help us understand their role. Various investigations have developed reaction rate expressions based on an Arrhenius temperature dependence that is first order in substrate concentration and close to first order in acid concentration. In this article, we evaluate these existing hydrolysis models with the goal of providing a foundation for a unified model that can predict performance of both current and novel pretreatment process configurations.     

The use of 29Si NMR to characterize the sol-gel synthesis of cordierite

 Cordierite powder was synthesized via different sol-gel procedures. The use of ²⁹Si NMR spectra of all stages beginning from tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) up to final ceramic powder material is discussed. In the early stages of the sol-gel process all oligomeric structure units can be identified. Spectra of the higher condensed sols only allow the quantification of Qⁿ-groups. MAS spectra of gels heated up to 750 °C show no fine structure to be evaluated. Spectra of samples heated to 1250 °C indicate a sluggish disorder-order transformation from hexagonal α-cordierite to orthorhombic cordierite. Received: 20 May 1996/Accepted: 25 July 1996     

烯唑醇免疫亲和色谱柱的制备及其在样品前处理中的应用

将四甲氧基硅烷(TMOS)水解后与烯唑醇抗体聚合,采用溶胶-凝胶法合成了烯唑醇免疫亲和色谱(IAC)柱固定相,并用其制备了对烯唑醇具有特异性亲和力的IAC柱。对IAC柱条件进行了优化,选择超纯水作为吸附与平衡介质,30%～50%(体积分数)甲醇水溶液作为洗脱剂。结果表明: 在优化条件下,IAC柱对烯唑醇的动态柱容量达125.4 μg/g。在河水样品和水果样品中添加烯唑醇,经IAC柱净化富集,洗脱液采用高效液相色谱检测,河水中烯唑醇的平均回收率为90.36%～100.14%,相对标准偏差(RSD)为2.03%～6.08%;水果中烯唑醇的平均回收率为85.55%～94.02%, RSD为3.38%～6.78%。本研究为烯唑醇在河水、水果等样品中的残留分析提供了一种新的高效前处理手段。     

The use of DSC to characterize structural relaxation in thermosetting polymers

Structural relaxation in different epoxy-anhydride and epoxy-diamine resins has been investigated by differential scanning calorimetry using annealing and cooling rate experiments. The annealing experiments lead to the determination of enthalpy loss,H, at an equivalent annealing temperatureT _a=T _g-20, and for periods of annealing time, t_a, between 1 h and 4 months. The variation ofH with logt_a, defines a relaxation rate per decade,rrpd, which is very sensitive to changes of the epoxy network. The cooling rate experiments allow the determination of the apparent activation energy,h ^*. The effect of the degree of crosslinking, the addition of a reactive diluent, which acts as flexibilizer, and the length of cross-link onrrpd and h^* was studied.Financial support has been provided by DGICYT (Project no.PB93/1241). The authors are grateful to CIBA-GEIGY for supplying the epoxies and hardeners, and to HUNTSMAN CORPORATION EUROPE for supplying the JEFFAMINE*, J.M.H. wishes to acknowledge assistance for a sabbatical period from theMinisterio de Education y Ciencia.