Concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in groundwater at a coal tar site were elevated by factors ranging from 3 (pyrene) to 50 (indeno[1,2,3-cd]pyrene) over purely dissolved concentrations. Air-groundwater surface tension measurements (70.6 +/- 3 dyn/cm) were not sufficiently different from air-pure water measures (72.2 +/- 0.1 dyn/cm) to ascribe the observed enrichments to ...

The present study examined the metabolic pathways of pyrene in dungeness crabs (Cancer magister) in the laboratory and the potential of using synchronous fluorescence spectrometry (SFS) to determine pyrene metabolite concentrations in the hemolymph of crabs exposed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the field. Pyrene was metabolized by crabs mainly to 1-hydroxypyrene and pyrene-1-glu...

In this work surface-enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopic experiments have demonstrated that metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes can be used as chemical assemblies between the pyrene analyte and the silver colloidal surface. Pyrene has been detected at concentrations lower than 10(-9) M by use of the 514.5 nm excitation laser line. A charge transfer from the surface to the nanotube charac...

Fluorescence techniques are commonly and powerfully applied to monitor biomolecular folding. In a limited fashion, the fluorescence emission intensity of covalently attached pyrene has been used as a reporter of RNA conformational changes. Here, we pursue two goals: we examine the relationship between tether identity and fluorescence response, and we determine the general utility of pyrene fluo...

A greenhouse study was conducted to monitor microbial community dynamics related to contaminant concentration and plant growth during the phytoremediation of pyrene. Soil microbial communities in both bulk and rhizosphere soils were assessed using a polymerase chain reaction--denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE). However, no correlation between pyrene concentration and bacterial c...

Industrialization, economic and population growth rates in Ghana have increased the release of contaminants including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into the environment through which humans and animals are exposed. Cattle is reported to be exposed to high levels of PAHs through feed and inhalation. Once exposed, PAHs are metabolized and excreted in urine, feces or bile. In a previous ...

Molecular beacon DNA probes, containing 1-4 pyrene monomers on the 5' end and the quencher DABCYL on the 3' end, were engineered and employed for real-time probing of DNA sequences. In the absence of a target sequence, the multiple-pyrene labeled molecular beacons (MBs) assumed a stem-closed conformation resulting in quenching of the pyrene excimer fluorescence. In the presence of target, the b...

We propose that the cellular burden of certain carcinogens may be mitigated by P-glycoprotein (P-gp), the putative drug effiux pump. In a series of multidrug resistant human breast cancer MCF-7 cells with increasing P-gp expression we examined this hypothesis using benzo(a)pyrene, a widely distributed environmental and dietary carcinogen. We found that multidrug resistant cells were cross-resis...

Emissions from fossil fuel combustion pose a serious threat to public health and =pose the need for animproved monitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PARS), a major class of persistent organicpollutants. For this purpose the present study reports an investigation of the electronic structure of Pyrene byuse of different chemical models We also made a comparison between different chemica...

Novel butterfly-shaped, highly fluorescent stable monomers of the type 7-tert-butyl-1,3,5,9-tetrakisarylpyrene were synthesized by the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction of the new bromopyrene derivative 7-tert-butyl-1,3, 5,9-tetrabromopyrene with the corresponding arylboronic acids. The design and synthesis of efficient electroluminescent materials based on polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) has be...