Evaluation of microalgae production coupled with wastewater treatment.

In the present study, the feasibility of microalgae production coupled with wastewater treatment was assessed. Continuous cultivation of Chlorella sorokiniana with wastewater was tested in lab-scale flat-panel photobioreactors. Nitrogen and phosphorus removals were found to be inversely proportional to the four dilution rates, while chemical oxygen demand removal was found to be 50% at all the tested conditions.

Metagenomic analysis and functional characterization of the biogas microbiome using high throughput shotgun sequencing and a novel binning strategy.

Background: Biogas production is an economically attractive technology that has gained momentum worldwide over the past years. Biogas is produced by a biologically mediated process, widely known as "anaerobic digestion." This process is performed by a specialized and complex microbial community, in which different members have distinct roles in the establishment of a collective organization.

New steady-state microbial community compositions and process performances in biogas reactors induced by temperature disturbances.

Background: The microbial community in a biogas reactor greatly influences the process performance. However, only the effects of deterministic factors (such as temperature and hydraulic retention time (HRT)) on the microbial community and performance have been investigated in biogas reactors. Little is known about the manner in which stochastic factors (for example, stochastic birth, death, colonization, and extinction) and disturbance affect the stable-state microbial community and reactor performances.

Microbial diversity and dynamicity of biogas reactors due to radical changes of feedstock composition.

The anaerobic digestion process is often inhibited by alteration of substrates and/or organic overload. This study aimed to elucidate changes of microbial ecology in biogas reactors upon radical changes of substrates and to determine their importance to process imbalance. For this reason, continuously fed reactors were disturbed with pulses of proteins, lipids and carbohydrates and the microbial ecology of the reactors were characterized by 16S rRNA gene sequencing before and after the imposed changes.

Microplate-based method for high-throughput screening of microalgae growth potential.

Microalgae cultivation conditions in microplates will differ from large-scale photobioreactors in crucial parameters such as light profile, mixing and gas transfer. Hence volumetric productivity (P(v)) measurements made in microplates cannot be directly scaled up. Here we demonstrate that it is possible to use microplates to measure characteristic exponential growth rates and determine the specific growth rate light intensity dependency (μ-I curve), which is useful as the key input for several models that predict P(v).

Effective harvesting of the microalgae Chlorella protothecoides via bioflocculation with cationic starch.

In the present work, the flocculation efficiency of cationic starch (Greenfloc 120) was tested on the fresh water microalga Chlorella protothecoides under different conditions (pH and flocculant concentrations). Different concentrations of Greenfloc 120 (0, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40 mg L(-1)) were screened against different algal densities (0.

Microbial analysis in biogas reactors suffering by foaming incidents.

Foam formation can lead to total failure of digestion process in biogas plants. In the present study, possible correlation between foaming and the presence of specific microorganisms in biogas reactors was elucidated. The microbial ecology of continuous fed digesters overloaded with proteins, lipids and carbohydrates before and after foaming incidents was characterized using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.

Chaperonins from an Antarctic archaeon are predominantly monomeric: crystal structure of an open state monomer.

Archaea are abundant in permanently cold environments. The Antarctic methanogen, Methanococcoides burtonii, has proven an excellent model for studying molecular mechanisms of cold adaptation. Methanococcoides burtonii contains three group II chaperonins that diverged prior to its closest orthologues from mesophilic Methanosarcina spp.

The RNA polymerase subunits E/F from the Antarctic archaeon Methanococcoides burtonii bind to specific species of mRNA.

RNA polymerase in Archaea is composed of 11 or 12 subunits - 9 or 10 that form the core, and a heterodimer formed from subunits E and F that associates with the core and can interact with general transcription factors and facilitate transcription. While the ability of the heterodimer to bind RNA has been demonstrated, it has not been determined whether it can recognize specific RNA targets. In this study we used a recombinant archaeal MbRpoE/F to capture cellular mRNA in vitro and a microarray to determine which transcripts it specifically binds.

A chemically modified alpha-amylase with a molten-globule state has entropically driven enhanced thermal stability.

The thermostability properties of TAA were investigated by chemically modifying carboxyl groups on the surface of the enzyme with AMEs. The TAA(MOD) exhibited a 200% improvement in starch-hydrolyzing productivity at 60 degrees C. By studying the kinetic, thermodynamic and biophysical properties, we found that TAA(MOD) had formed a thermostable, MG state, in which the unfolding of the tertiary structure preceded that of the secondary structure by at least 20 degrees C.

The genome sequence of the psychrophilic archaeon, Methanococcoides burtonii: the role of genome evolution in cold adaptation.

Psychrophilic archaea are abundant and perform critical roles throughout the Earth's expansive cold biosphere. Here we report the first complete genome sequence for a psychrophilic methanogenic archaeon, Methanococcoides burtonii. The genome sequence was manually annotated including the use of a five-tiered evidence rating (ER) system that ranked annotations from ER1 (gene product experimentally characterized from the parent organism) to ER5 (hypothetical gene product) to provide a rapid means of assessing the certainty of gene function predictions.

A novel approach for enhancing the catalytic efficiency of a protease at low temperature: reduction in substrate inhibition by chemical modification.

The alkaline protease, savinase was chemically modified to enhance the productivity of the enzyme at low temperatures on a complex polymeric protein (azocasein) substrate. At 5 and 15 degrees C, savinase modified with ficol or dextran hydrolyzed fivefold more azocasein than the unmodified savinase. Kinetic studies showed that the catalytic improvements are associated with changes in uncompetitive substrate inhibition with K(i) values of modified savinases sixfold higher than the unmodified savinase.

Role of lysine versus arginine in enzyme cold-adaptation: modifying lysine to homo-arginine stabilizes the cold-adapted alpha-amylase from Pseudoalteramonas haloplanktis.

The cold-adapted alpha-amylase from Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis (AHA) is a multidomain enzyme capable of reversible unfolding. Cold-adapted proteins, including AHA, have been predicted to be structurally flexible and conformationally unstable as a consequence of a high lysine-to-arginine ratio. In order to examine the role of low arginine content in structural flexibility of AHA, the amino groups of lysine were guanidinated to form homo-arginine (hR), and the structure-function-stability properties of the modified enzyme were analyzed by transverse urea gradient-gel electrophoresis.