Characterization of Therapeutic Antibody Charge Heterogeneity Under Stress Conditions by Microfluidic Capillary Electrophoresis Coupled with Mass Spectrometry.

Therapeutic antibodies are a major class of biopharmaceutics that are applied in disease treatment because of their many advantages, including high specificity and high affinity to molecular targets. Between their production and administration, therapeutic antibodies are exposed to multiple stress conditions. Forced degradation and stress stability studies are conducted to simulate the risk of degradation and the effects of these stresses, thereby enhancing understanding of the drug product to support strategies to mitigate the impact from stressed conditions.

Physicochemical and physiological changes during the ripening of Banana ( fruit grown in Colombia.

The physicochemical and physiological attributes of three contrasting commercial varieties of Dominico Harton (plantain), Guineo (cooking banana) and Gros Michel (dessert banana), were evaluated and statistically analysed during post-harvest ripening. Quality attributes differed markedly among varieties, both in fresh fruits and during ripening. Variety (V) had a significant effect ( < 0.

Plant-Based Cellulase Assay Systems as Alternatives for Synthetic Substrates.

Dissociative enzymes such as cellulases are greatly desired for a variety of applications in the food, fuel, and fiber industries. Cellulases and other cell wall-degrading enzymes are currently being engineered with improved traits for application in the breakdown of lignocellulosic biomass. Biochemical assays using these "designer" enzymes have traditionally been carried out using synthetic substrates such as crystalline bacterial microcellulose (BMCC).

Aromatic residues surrounding the active site tunnel of TfCel48A influence activity, processivity, and synergistic interactions with other cellulases.

Cel48A of Thermobifida fusca (TfCel48A) is a processive exocellulase that contains an active site tunnel and digests lignocellulosic biomass via synergistic interactions between different cellulases. Cel48A possesses a number of aromatic amino acids lining the tunnel entrance, which are highly conserved across a diverse number of microbial species and appear to play a role in the selection and threading of individual strands of cellulose from highly recalcitrant substrates. In this study, we sought to further elucidate the roles of these tunnel entrance aromatic amino acids by creating a series of double mutants and examining their effect on TfCel48A activity, processivity, and synergistic interactions with the well-studied processive endocellulase TfCel9A.

Transformations to reduce the effect of particle size in mid-infrared spectra of biomass.

Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) spectroscopy is a very powerful technique for the characterization of the chemical composition of biomass and its modifications occurring during thermochemical and chemical pretreatments. However, method development is necessary to generate reproducible signals that can be used in combination with multivariate techniques (such as principal component analysis, PCA) to extract meaningful information on biomass composition and bond cleavage. Particle size is a great source of spectra variability in FTIR of biomass.