Publications by authors named "Nelson Romano"

Layer-by-Layer (LbL) self-assembly encapsulation is a promising technology for the protection and delivery of lactic acid bacteria. However, laboratory-scale encapsulation is often time-consuming, involves intensive protocols tailored for small-scale operations, requires substantial amounts of energy and water, and results in a low yield of encapsulated biomass. Scaling-up this process to a bench-bioreactor scale is not simply a matter of increasing culture volume as different key parameters (not particularly relevant at lab scale) become critical, including biomass production, the number of polymer layers, and the biomass-to-polymer mass ratio.

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Although studies on non-tuberculous mycobacteria have increased in recent years because they cause a considerable proportion of infections, their cellulolytic system is still poorly studied. This study presents a characterization of the cellulolytic activities of environmental mycobacterial isolates derived from soil and water samples from the central region of Argentina, aimed to evaluate the conservation of the mechanism for the degradation of cellulose in this group of bacteria. The molecular and genomic identification revealed identity with Mycolicibacterium septicum.

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Recently, the development of materials with antimicrobial properties has become a challenge under scrutiny. The incorporation of copper nanoparticles (NpCu) into a chitosan matrix appears to represent a viable strategy to contain the particles and prevent their oxidation. Regarding the physical properties, the nanocomposite films (CHCu) showed a decrease in the elongation at break (5 %) and an increase in the tensile strength of 10 % concerning chitosan films (control).

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Dehydration of lactic acid bacteria for technological purposes conducts to multilevel damage of bacterial cells. The goal of this work was to determine at which molecular level fructose-oligosaccharides (FOS) and sucrose protect Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus CIDCA 333 during the vacuum-drying process.

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The relevance of an appropriate nutrition requires innovation in the design of food ingredients. The goal of this work was to obtain a powdered extract of quinoa by using spray-drying. To this aim, quinoa flour was suspended in water to obtain a soluble fraction mainly composed of proteins, starch, fiber, lipids, antioxidants and minerals.

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Grape must market has been rising and there is an increasing interest to use it as a "natural" replacement for traditional sugars. Food or beverages with prebiotic compounds, including fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), emerge as an alternative for the new health style trend. The aim of this work was to investigate whether the combination of grape must with sucrose was a suitable raw material for the synthesis of FOS.

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Prosopis nigra, a sucrose-rich crop, was used to enzymatically synthesize fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS). The obtained products were used as stabilizing matrices during freeze-drying and storage of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus CIDCA 333.

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The stabilizing capacity of crystalline inulin during spray-drying and storage of Lactobacillus plantarum CIDCA 83114 was assessed. In a first step, the physical properties of the matrices were investigated, using amorphous inulin as control. Melting and glass transition temperatures, water sorption isotherms, water activity, and infrared spectra were determined.

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Two types of inulins of different composition were investigated in the glassy and in the crystalline states, at relative humidities within 11 and 97%. The melting and glass transition temperatures (Tm, Tg), and their crystallinity indexes (CI) were determined by modulated differential-scanning calorimetry (MDSC) and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), respectively. In parallel assays, Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) coupled to principal component analysis (PCA) enabled a physical-chemical and structural characterization of samples, explaining 90% of the total variance.

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The aim of this work was to assess the role of mono- and oligosaccharides present in fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) mixtures as protective agents during freeze-drying and storage of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus CIDCA 333. Different FOS mixtures were enzymatically obtained from sucrose and further purified by removing the monosaccharides produced as secondary products.

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Malt sprout (MS), a by-product of the malt industry obtained by removing rootlets and sprouts from the seed of germinated barley ( L.), was used as culture, dehydration and storage medium of three strains of lactobacilli: CM-CIDCA 1231B and CM-CIDCA 1232Y and CIDCA 83114. The three strains were grown in MS and MS supplemented with 20% w/v fructo-oligosaccharides (MS FOS).

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Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) are mixtures of oligosaccharides composed of fructose and glucose units. As their composition is determined by the synthesis conditions, the goals of this work were: (a) to engineer FOS of different composition by adjusting the sucrose concentration used as initial substrate; (b) to define partial least square (PLS) based-models to quantify all the sugars present in the reaction medium directly from the FTIR spectra. The yield of each reaction was calculated as the percentage of initial sucrose converted to each oligosaccharide, as monitored by HPLC.

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The goal of this work was to investigate the physicochemical properties of methylcellulose (MC) based films as stabilizers of two strains of lactobacilli: Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus CIDCA 333 and Lactobacillus plantarum CIDCA 83114. The incorporation of 3% w/v fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) into the MC film formulation improved the viability of L.

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Cellulolytic activities of three bacterial consortia derived from a forest soil sample from Chaco region, Argentina, were characterized. The phylogenetic analysis of consortia revealed two main highly supported groups including Achromobacter and Pseudomonas genera. All three consortia presented cellulolytic activity.

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