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Due to a worldwide focus on sustainable materials for human health and economy services, more and more natural renewable biomass are regarded as promising materials that could replace synthetic polymers and reduce global dependence on petroleum resources. Cellulose is known as the most abundant renewable polymer in nature, varieties of cellulose-based products have been developed and have gained growing interest in recent years. In this review, a kind of water-soluble cellulose derivative, i.e., sodium cellulose sulfate (NaCS) is introduced. Details about NaCS's physicochemical properties like solubility, biocompatibility, biodegradability, degree of substitution, etc. are systematically elaborated. And promising applications of NaCS used as biomaterials for microcarriers' designing, such as microcell- carriers, micro-drug-carriers, etc., are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbial side-chain cleavage of natural sterols to 4-androstene-3,17-dione (AD) and 1,4-androstadiene-3,17-dione (ADD) by Mycobacteria has received much attention in pharmaceutical industry, while low yield of the reaction owing to the strong hydrophobicity of sterols is a tough problem to be solved urgently. Eight kinds of vegetable oils, i.e., sunflower, peanut, corn, olive, linseed, walnut, grape seed, and rice oil, were used to construct oil/aqueous biphasic systems in the biotransformation of phytosterols by Mycobacterium sp. MB 3683 cells. The results indicated that vegetable oils are suitable for phytosterol biotransformation. Specially, the yield of AD carried out in sunflower biphasic system (phase ratio of 1:9, oil to aqueous) was greatly increased to 84.8 % with 10 g/L feeding concentration after 120-h transformation at 30 °C and 200 rpm. Distribution coefficients of AD in different oil/aqueous systems were also determined. Because vegetable oils are of low cost and because of their eco-friendly characters, there is a great potential for the application of oil/aqueous two-phase systems in bacteria whole cell biocatalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The components of a natural medium were optimized to produce cellulase from a marine Aspergillus niger under solid state fermentation conditions by response surface methodology. Eichhornia crassipes and natural seawater were used as a major substrate and a source of mineral salts, respectively. Mineral salts of natural seawater could increase cellulase production. Raw corn cob and raw rice straw showed a significant positive effect on cellulase production. The optimum natural medium consisted of 76.9 % E. crassipes (w/w), 8.9 % raw corn cob (w/w), 3.5 % raw rice straw (w/w), 10.7 % raw wheat bran (w/w), and natural seawater (2.33 times the weight of the dry substrates). Incubation for 96 h in the natural medium increased the biomass to the maximum. The cellulase production was 17.80 U/g the dry weight of substrates after incubation for 144 h. The natural medium avoided supplying chemicals and pretreating substrates. It is promising for future practical fermentation of environment-friendly producing cellulase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recombinant human interferon-gamma (rhIFN-γ) is a protein of great potential for clinical therapy due to its multiple biological activities. However, overexpressing rhIFN-γ in Escherichia coli was found to accumulate as cytoplasmic inclusion bodies. In this work, a system for soluble and active expression of rhIFN-γ was constructed by coexpressing chaperonin GroEL/GroES in E. coli. The rhIFN-γ gene was fused to a pET-28a expression vector, and rhIFN-γ was partially expressed as the soluble form following coexpression with a second vector producing chaperonin GroEL/GroES. The fermentation of recombinant E. coli harboring rhIFN-γ and GroEL/GroES plasmids was investigated, and the optimized conditions were as follows: culture temperature of 25°C, incubation time of 8 h, isopropyl-β- d-thio-galactoside concentration of 0.2 mM, and l-arabinose concentration of 0.5 g/L. As a result, the expression level of rhIFN-γ was improved accordingly by 2.2-fold than the control, while a significantly positive correlation was also found between the ratio of supernatant to precipitate of rhIFN-γ and the amount of chaperonin. Circular dichroism spectra, fluorescence spectra, size exclusion chromatography, and chemical cross-linking method were applied to characterize rhIFN-γ, indicating that the three-dimensional structure of rhIFN-γ was identical to that of the native rhIFN-γ. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for active rhIFN-γ quantification showed that coexpression yielded 72.91 mg rhIFN-γ per liter fermentation broth. Finally, protein-protein interactions between rhIFN-γ and chaperonin were analyzed using the yeast two-hybrid system, which provided the direct evidence that chaperonin GroEL/GroES interacted with rhIFN-γ to increase the soluble expression and presented the potential in producing efficiently recombinant proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of renaturation by dilution and size exclusion chromatography (SEC) addition of urea to improve yield as well as the initial and final protein concentrations showed that although urea decreased the rate of lysozyme refolding, it could suppress protein aggregation to sustain the pathway of correct refolding at high protein concentration; and that there existed an optimum urea concentration in renaturation buffer. Under the above conditions, lysozyme was successfully refolded from initial concentration of up to 40 mg/mL by dilution and 100 mg/mL by SEC, with the yield of the former being more than 40% and that of the latter being 34.8%. Especially, under the condition of 30 min interval time, i.e. τ>2( t R2−tR1), the efficiency was increased by 25% and the renaturation buffer could be recycled for SEC refolding in continuous operation of downstream process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adsorption equilibrium and kinetics were studied for the binding of proteins to CM Sepharose FF and DEAE Sepharose FF. The influence of temperature, pH, viscosity, initial concentration and the volume of adsorbents on the adsorption characteristics was investigated in detail. The results showed that the isotherms of lysozyme to CM Sepharose FF were well described by a Langmuir-type correlation. The two phase resistance model describing the dynamic adsorption process of lysozyme, papain, BSA to CM Sepharose FF was presented, and the pore diffusion coefficients were determined by using this model and the dynamic adsorption data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on optimization of denaturing conditions and the character of time course of protein refolding, renaturation by dilution in batch and fed-batch operation to improve yield as well as the initial and final protein concentrations has been studied. The optimum DTT in denatured solution was 30 mM. Urea can suppress protein aggregation to sustain pathway of correct refolding at high protein concentration. Fed-batch operation was better than batch dilution with comparison of yield recovery in large-scale downstream processes. Under our research condition in fed-batch operation, lysozyme was successfully refolded from initial protein concentration of up to 40 mg/mL by dilution 20-fold, the yield recovery was nearly 60%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]