Molecularly imprinted polymers for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances enrichment and detection.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are highly toxic pollutants of significant concern as they are being detected in water, air, fish and soil. They are extremely persistent and accumulate in plant and animal tissues. Traditional methods of detection and removal of these substances use specialised instrumentation and require a trained technical resource for operation.

Highly selective recovery of Ni(II) in neutral and acidic media using a novel Ni(II)-ion imprinted polymer.

In this work, an original ion-imprinted polymer (IIP) was synthetized for the highly selective removal of Ni(II) ions in neutral and acidic media. First a novel functional monomer (AMP-MMA) was synthetized through the amidation of 2-(aminomethyl)pyridine (AMP) with methacryloylchloride. Following Ni(II)/AMP-MMA complex formation study, the Ni(II)-IIP was produced via inverse suspension polymerization (DMSO in mineral oil) and characterized with solid state C CPMAS NMR, FT-IR, SEM and nitrogen adsorption/desorption experiments.

Modified 3D-printed device for mercury determination in waters.

3D printing technology is increasingly used in flow analysis, to develop low cost and tailor-made devices. The possibility of grafting specific molecules onto 3D printed parts offers new perspectives for the development of flow systems. In this study, a MPFS system including a dicarboxylate 1,5-diphenyl-3-thiocarbazone grafted 3D-printed device has been developed for mercury determination.

Specialization of small non-conjugative plasmids in according to their family types.

We undertook a comprehensive comparative analysis of a collection of 30 small (<25 kb) non-conjugative plasmids previously classified by the gene sharing approach into 10 families, as well as plasmids found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) nucleotide database sharing similar genomic sequences. In total, 302 mobilizable (belonging to 2 MOB and 5 MOB families) and 106 non-transferable/relaxase-negative (belonging to three ReL families) plasmids were explored. The most striking feature was the specialization of the plasmid family types that was not related to their transmission mode and replication system.

Advantage of the F2:A1:B- IncF Pandemic Plasmid over IncC Plasmids in Acquisition and Evolution of Gene-Bearing Plasmids in Escherichia coli.

Despite a fitness cost imposed on bacterial hosts, large conjugative plasmids play a key role in the diffusion of resistance determinants, such as CTX-M extended-spectrum β-lactamases. Among the large conjugative plasmids, IncF plasmids are the most predominant group, and an F2:A1:B- IncF-type plasmid encoding a CTX-M-15 variant was recently described as being strongly associated with the emerging worldwide sequence type 131 (ST131)-O25b:H4 30Rx/C2 sublineage. In this context, we investigated the fitness cost of narrow-range F-type plasmids, including the F2:A1:B- IncF-type CTX-M-15 plasmid, and of broad-range C-type plasmids in the K-12-like J53-2 strain.