Background: Immobilization is an approach in industry to improve stability and reusability of urease. The efficiency of this technique depends on the type of membrane and the method of stabilization. Methods: The PEI-modified egg shell membrane was used to immobilize urease by absorption and glutaraldehyde cross-linking methods. The membranes were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared sp...

Harmful effects of contaminants on the ecosystem and humans cannot be assessed by standard chemical analyses of environmental samples, therefore toxicity tests using live organisms or cells represent a vital part of environmental monitoring. Biological methods based on microorganisms as test-species, have already successfully been applied to environmental toxicity/genotoxicity assessment. The e...

This paper reports on hydrocarbon-degrading microbial consortia immobilized in biofilms on gravel particles in the intertidal zone of the Arabian Gulf coast. These microorganisms contribute to the self-cleaning of the coasts and, in addition, could potentially be used for cleaning oily industrial waste before its disposal in the open environment. Each gravel particle was found coated with about...

BACKGROUND Several cationic polymers exhibit a useful antimicrobial property, however the structure-activity relationship still requires a more complete investigation. The main objective of this work is the comparison between the antimicrobial activity and toxicity of free and immobilized poly (diallyldimethylammonium) chloride (PDDA) in biocompatible poly (methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) nanopartic...

spirulina platensis, a cyanobacterium of economic important was studied for the tolerance to cadmium. the bioassay studies showed the ec50 value to be 1.53 mg/g. the cyanobacterium was very sensitive to low metal concentration and the productivity was also reduced. the chlorophyll pigments reduced with decreasing the algal biomass. the algal survival rate showed a marked reduction in their surv...

An extracellular alkaline protease producing B. amyloliquefaciens SP1 was isolated from apple rhizosphere having multifarious plant growth-promoting activities. B. amyloliquefaciens SP1 protease was immobilized using various concentrations of calcium alginate, agar and polyacrylamide to determine the optimum concentration for formation of the beads. Enzyme activity before immobilization (at 60 ...

Staphylococcus aureus invasion of mammalian cells, including epithelial, endothelial, and fibroblastic cells, critically depends on fibronectin bridging between S. aureus fibronectin-binding proteins (FnBPs) and the host fibronectin receptor integrin alpha(5)beta(1) (B. Sinha et al., Cell. Microbiol. 1:101-117, 1999). However, it is unknown whether this mechanism is sufficient for S. aureus inv...

In the present study, we investigated the ability of an immobilized phospholipase A1 (PLA1) in degumming of soybean oil. The enzyme was immobilized by simple adsorption on bentonite without any further modification. The free and immobilized PLA1 were characterized by Fourier Transform InfraRed (FT-IR) spectroscopy and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). The immobilizat...