Salts

This study evaluates the changes in bacterial and archaeal community structure during the gradual evaporation of water from the brine (extracted from subsurface Jurassic deposits) in the system of graduation towers located in Ciechocinek spa, Poland. The communities were assessed with 16S rRNA gene sequencing (MiSeq, Illumina) and microscopic methods. The microbial cell density determined by direct cell count was at the order of magnitude of 10cells/mL. It was found that increasing salt concentration was positively correlated with both the cell counts, and species-level diversity of bacterial and archaeal communities. The archaeal community was mostly constituted by members of the phylum Euryarchaeota, class Halobacteria and was dominated by Halorubrum-related sequences. The bacterial community was more diverse, with representatives of the phyla Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes as the most abundant. The proportion of Proteobacteria decreased with increasing salt concentration, while...

The purpose of this research was to establish the dose of UV light (253.7 nm) needed to inactivate Listeria monocytogenes in distilled water, fresh brine (9% NaCl), spent brine, and diluted (5, 35, and 55%) spent brine, using uridine as a chemical actinometer. Strains N1-227 (isolated from hot dog batter), N3-031 (isolated from turkey franks), and R2-499 (isolated from meat) were mixed in equal proportions and suspended in each solution prepared so as to contain 10(-4) M uridine. Samples were irradiated in sterile quartz cells for 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 min. Inactivation was evaluated by serially diluting samples in 0.1% peptone, by surface plating in duplicate onto modified Oxford agar and Trypticase soy agar with yeast extract, and by enrichment in brain heart infusion broth, followed by incubation at 37 degrees C for 24 to 48 h. For dose measurements, the absorbance (262 nm) was measured before and after irradiation. Differences were observed in population estimates dependin...

We study the liquid structure and solvation forces of dense monovalent electrolytes (LiCl, NaCl, CsCl, and NaI) in a nanometer slab-confinement by explicit-water molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, implicit-water Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, and modified Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) theories. In order to consistently coarse-grain and to account for specific hydration effects in the implicit methods, realistic ion-ion and ion-surface pair potentials have been derived from infinite-dilution MD simulations. The electrolyte structure calculated from MC simulations is in good agreement with the corresponding MD simulations, thereby validating the coarse-graining approach. The agreement improves if a realistic, MD-derived dielectric constant is employed, which partially corrects for (water-mediated) many-body effects. Further analysis of the ionic structure and solvation pressure demonstrates that nonlocal extensions to PB (NPB) perform well for a wide parameter range when compared to MC simulations, whereas all local extensions mostly fail. A Barker-Henderson mapping of the ions onto a charged, asymmetric, and nonadditive binary hard-sphere mixture shows that the strength of structural correlations is strongly related to the magnitude and sign of the salt-specific nonadditivity. Furthermore, a grand canonical NPB analysis shows that the Donnan effect is dominated by steric correlations, whereas solvation forces and overcharging effects are mainly governed by ion-surface interactions. However, steric corrections to solvation forces are strongly repulsive for high concentrations and low surface charges, while overcharging can also be triggered by steric interactions in strongly correlated systems. Generally, we find that ion-surface and ion-ion correlations are strongly coupled and that coarse-grained methods should include both, the latter nonlocally and nonadditive (as given by our specific ionic diameters), when studying electrolytes in highly inhomogeneous situations.

Protocols for recombinant polypeptide production should provide high yields and be efficient, user friendly, and time saving. To perform cyanogen bromide (CNBr) cleavage of fusion proteins, the majority of researchers first desalted and vacuum-dried samples and then dissolved them in aqueous formic or trifluoroacetic acid. We propose to exclude the desalting step and run CNBr cleavage directly. We show that

M. ZAMFIR, R. CALLEWAERT, P.C. CORNEA, L. SAVU, I. VATAFU and L. DE VUYST.1999.Lactobacillus acidophilus IBB 801 produces a small bacteriocin, designated acidophilin 801, with an estimated molecular mass of less than 6·5 kDa. It displays a narrow inhibitory spectrum (only related lactobacilli but including the Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria Escherichia coli Row and Salmonella panama 1467) with a bactericidal activity. The antimicrobial activity of cell-free culture supernatant fluid was insensitive to catalase but sensitive to proteolytic enzymes such as trypsin, proteinase K and pronase, heat-stable (30 min at 121 °C), and maintained in a wide pH range. The proteinaceous compound was isolated from cell-free culture supernatant fluid and purified. Crude bacteriocin was isolated as a floating pellicle after ammonium sulphate precipitation (40% saturation) and partially purified by extraction/precipitation with chloroform/methanol (2/1, v/v). Further purification to homogeneity was performed by reversed phase Fast Performance Liquid Chromatography. The amino acid composition was determined. Amino acid sequencing revealed that the N-terminal end was blocked.

Desalting of sugar samples is essential for the success of many techniques of carbohydrate analysis such as mass spectrometry, capillary electrophoresis, anion exchange chromatography, enzyme degradation and chemical derivatization. All desalting methods which are currently used have limitations: for example, mixed-bed ion-exchange columns risk the loss of charged sugars, precipitation of salt by a non-aqueous solvent can result in co-precipitation of oligosaccharides, and gel chromatography uses highly crosslinked packings in which separation of small oligosaccharides is difficult to achieve. We demonstrate that graphitized carbon as a solid phase extraction cartridge can be used for the purification of oligosaccharides (or their derivatives) from solutions containing one or more of the following contaminants: salts (including salts of hydroxide, acetate, phosphate), monosaccharides, detergents (sodium dodecyl sulfate and Triton X-100), protein (including enzymes) and reagents for ...

Advances in experimental and computational methodologies have led to a recent renewed interest in the Hofmeister series and its molecular origins. New results are surveyed and assessed. Insights into the underlying mechanisms have been gained, although deeper molecular understanding still seems to be elusive. The principal reason appears to be that the Hofmeister series emerges from a combination of a general effect of cosolutes (salts, etc.) on solvent structure, and of specific interactions between the cosolutes and the solute (protein or other biopolymer). Hence every system needs to be studied individually in detail, a state of affairs which is likely to continue for some time. A deeper understanding of the Hofmeister series can be an extraordinarily valuable guide to designing experiments, including not only those probing the series per se, but also those designed to elucidate the adsorption, aggregation and stabilization phenomena which underlie so many biological events. The ...