Journal of Bioprocessing & Biotechniques

Algal biotechnology has gained interest world over as it is a better resource in comparison to land biomass. One interesting emerging application is its utilization in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) for the production of electricity while utilizing these algae for the treatment of industrial wastewater besides hydrocarbons and lipid production later. Presently, the potential of two strains of an oil-rich green alga Botryococcus braunii has been studied for its utilization in microbial fuel cells. Photosynthetic algal strains in various media in the cathodic half of the MFCs provided a continuous source of oxygen from their photosynthesis to serve as electron acceptor. This helped in reducing the cost of energy needed for mechanical aeration to enrich the catholyte with oxygen as electron acceptor. These cathodic half cells were combined separately with three different anolytes, firstly Saccharomyces cerevisiae culture alone, secondly, Saccharomyces cerevisiae culture supplemented with the mediator methylene blue (350 mg/L) and thirdly, sugar industry wastewater mixed with activated sludge. Amongst MFCs consisting of various combinations of these catholytes and anolytes, highest values of power density (7.27 μW/cm2) and current density (20.87 μA/cm2) were observed with Saccharomyces cerevisiae culture supplemented with methylene blue as the anolyte and B. braunii in soap industry wastewater as the catholyte. Present study demonstrates the potential of the coupling of cultivation of photosynthetic B. braunii for biodiesel production with the wastewater treatment plant as a sustainable source of electricity in microbial fuel cells.

This work is to details an environmental benign route for the fabrication of Copper oxide nanoparticles (CuONPs) using Hibiscus rosa-sinensis flower extracts at room temperature. This method is totally a green method, free from toxic and harmful solvent. The present study is aimed to prepare flower extract of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis in deionised water. This extract is added to copper acetate solution and we observed the Colour change of the solution from blue colour to sea green coloured solution, in confirmed the formation of Copper Oxide nanoparticles. The leaf extract helped in the bio reduction of Copper ions yielding CuO NPs. The CuO NPs thus biosynthesized were characterized using UV- visible spectra showed the absorbance peak of 505 nm due to the excitation of surface Plasmon vibrations. FTIR spectrum revealed that the reduction of Copper oxide nanoparticles. X-ray diffraction of the synthesized nanoparticles indicates the formation of CuO with a monoclinic structure. The synthesized nanoparticles are subjected to SEM, EDX, and antibacterial activities.

Background: To explore the expression and its clinical significance of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor II and III (VEGFR2 and VEGFR3) in early gastric cancer.
Methods: Immunohistochemical method is applied to detect 120 cases of early gastric cancer and normal gastric tissue of its cut edge in the expression of VEGFR2 and VEGFR3.
Results: The positive expression rates of VEGFR2 and VEGFR3 in early gastric cancer are 75% and 60%, which are higher than in normal gastric tissues of cut edge (22.5%, 12.5%), respectively. The expression of VEGFR2 and VEGFR3 is associated with depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis (P<0.05), regardless of patient's gender, age, tumor size, gross classification, differentiation (P>0.05).
Conclusion: VEGFR2 and VEGFR3 play important roles in occurrence and development of early gastric cancer, which potentially provides a basis for targeted molecular therapy of early gastric cancer.

There are many fermentation variables which can influence fermentation product during fermentation process, including fermentation time, temperature, pH, oxygen uptake rate (OUR), carbon dioxide evolution rate (CER), dissolved oxygen (DO) and stirring speed. For understanding the relationship between fermentation product and associated fermentation variables, one current interest is the investigation of significant fermentation variables to construct an interpretable and stable fermentation model. In this study, the significant variables in the fermentation process of glutamate were selected based on the generalized additive models through a shrinkage approach. The GAM2 which is based on less fermentation variables after variable selection has the same value of adjusted Rsquare (0.972) and deviance explained (97.6%) as GAM1 which includes all the measuring fermentation variables. Results showed that the proposed approach not only can identify the significant variables in the fermentation process of glutamate, but also can improve the performance of the fermentation model.

A very huge amounts of fruit wastes are available as sugar laden wastes world over. In fact, there is a need to recover value added products from these wastes. Fruit wastes are rich in sugars and carbohydrates which can be recovered and utilized for the production of bioethanol. Gasoline is being used at very huge scales globally. Therefore, plenty of bioethanol would be required to be produced if bioethanol has to replace gasoline as a fuel. Present studies are directed towards finding cost effective ways to recover sugars from fruit wastes starting initially without using any acidic or enzyme catalysts. In the present studies fruit wastes, such as, peels of banana (BP), pineapple (PAP), papaya (PP) and mango (MP) were used. The studies were aimed to find out the potential of these fruit wastes to produce total reducing sugars (TRS), pentose sugars (PS) and bioethanol. Simple soaking in water and steaming resulted in the recovery of free sugars. Enzymatic hydrolysis using cellulase and xylanase enzymes was found to show good yields of total reducing sugars and pentose sugars. BP and PAP were found to be the potential candidates for the production of bioethanol. In comparison to the enzymatic hydrolysis, the acidic hydrolysis using dilute H2SO4 was found to give higher yields of TRS and PS from fruit wastes in shorter times. However, the enzymatic hydrolysis was found to be a better choice for the production of bioethanol from the BP and PAP hydrolysates in order to avoid the inhibitory effect of yeast toxicants produced. Since the pretreatments by using costly chemicals are the costly steps in the enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass the presently developed pretreatment step seems to be a cost-effective method of pretreatment for the enzymatic hydrolysis. Therefore, simple water soaking, and steaming was found to be an inexpensive way to recover free sugars from fruit wastes. Enzymatic hydrolysis followed by the fermentation of hydrlysate using Saccharomyces cerevisae was found to produce bioethanol from the water-steam pretreated fruit wastes. Possible mechanism of enzymatic hydrolysis has also been suggested. Effect of enzyme concentration on the hydrolysis of PAP and BP for different times at 50°C was studied. Present studies showed that fruit wastes could be exploited as a potential source of bioethanol through simple water-steam soaking followed by the hydrolysis and fermentation processes.