Natural plankton assemblages were incubated with a small piece of silicone. Tygon or latex rubber tubing in 200 m1 of culture to determine potential long-term toxic effects of the tubing. Drastic decreases in cell numbers and chlorophyll fluorescence indicated that over 95 "h of the phytoplankton were killed by the latex rubber tubing in 4 d. Even a 1 mm piece of latex tubing lulled -90 % of th...

Certain Taraxacum species, such as Taraxacum koksaghyz and Taraxacum brevicorniculatum, produce large amounts of high-quality natural rubber in their latex, the milky cytoplasm of specialized cells known as laticifers. This high-molecular mass biopolymer consists mainly of poly(cis-1,4-isoprene) and is deposited in rubber particles by particle-bound enzymes that carry out the stereospecific con...

Allrgic reaction to natural rubber latex have increased during past 10 years especially among health worker and patients with high exposure to latex allergen. Latex allergy is associsted with clinical or serological cross reactivity to plant derived food allergcn especially tropical fruit for example avocado bannana chestnut kiwi papaya potato and peaches. In this study on health worker among 5...

The mechanical properties of non-vulcanized natural rubber and dialyzed natural rubber-clay nanocomposites have been studied by uniaxial deformations to evaluate the reinforcement efficiency of the clay. We show that while non-rubber molecules contribute to auto-reinforcement, removal of these molecules improves significantly the performance of clay as reinforcement agent. These mechanical prop...

Correspondence to: Takeshi Yagami, MS, Division of Medical Devices, National Institute of Health Sciences, Kamiyoga 118-1, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 158 (Japan) Dear Sir, Recently type I hypersensitivity reactions caused by rubber latex gloves have frequently been reported, and some proteins eluted from rubber gloves are considered to be responsible for this allergy [1]. Although the molecular weights...

Natural rubber is synthesized as rubber particles in the latex, the fluid cytoplasm of laticifers, of Hevea brasiliensis. Although it has been found that natural rubber is biosynthesized through the mevalonate pathway, the involvement of an alternative 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) pathway is uncertain. We obtained all series of the MEP pathway candidate genes by analyzing expressed...

Rubber (cis-1,4-polyisoprene), an important raw material for many industrial uses, is synthesized in the latex of Hevea brasiliensis (Willd. ex A. Juss.) Müll. Arg. We postulated that the genes uniquely or preferentially expressed in the latex may be important for rubber biosynthesis. We constructed cDNA libraries from the latex of H. brasiliensis to investigate the genes expressed in the latex...

Petroleum-based plastics have many drawbacks: the large amount of energy required to produce the plastic, the waste generated as a result of plastic production, and the accumulation of waste due to slow degradation rate. It is because of these negative attributes of conventional plastic use that attention is being focused on environmentally friendly plastics from alternative sources. Albumin pr...