Pulmonary surfactant contains homeostatic and antimicrobial hydrolases. When Mycobacterium tuberculosis is initially deposited in the terminal bronchioles and alveoli, as well as following release from lysed macrophages, bacilli are in intimate contact with these lung surfactant hydrolases. We identified and measured several hydrolases in human alveolar lining fluid and lung tissue that, at the...

Nanoemulsion is a unique and versatile fluid that solubilizes both ionic non-ionic molecules. It has been used extensively for drug delivery. Nanoemulsion, prepared with water-oil-surfactant co-surfactant, fluorescent at or the near IR region of electromagnetic spectrum. However, when protoporphyrin (PPIX), useful photosensitizer in PDT modality, poorly water-soluble compound, introduced into n...

Deposition of liquid droplets on solid surfaces is of great importance to many fundamental scientific principles and technological applications, such as spraying, coating, and printing. For example, during the process of pesticide spraying, more than 50% of agrochemicals are lost because of the undesired bouncing and splashing behaviors on hydrophobic or superhydrophobic leaves. We show that th...

Low-cost adsorbents were tested to remove anionic surfactants from laundry rinsing water to allow re-use of water. Adsorbents were selected corresponding to the different surfactant adsorption mechanisms. Equilibrium adsorption studies of linear alkyl benzene sulfonate (LAS) show that ionic interaction results in a high maximum adsorption capacity on positively charged adsorbents of 0.6-1.7 gLA...

Micelles are aggregates of surfactant molecules suspended in water. The structure (shape and size) of a micelle depends both on the architecture of the constituent surfactant molecule and the solution conditions such as temperature, presence of impurities, etc. The inter-particle interaction between micelles also depends on several different parameters. It is of interest to study the structure ...

In this paper, we report studies which aim to elucidate the mechanisms involved in the antimicrobial activity of three cationic lysine-based surfactants: LLM, LALM, and C6 (LL)2. To this end, a simple membrane model (i.e., 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-phosphatidylcholine, DPPC) was used to explore the monolayer properties at the air/liquid interface. Compression π-A isotherms of mixtures of DPPC/lysine s...

The peculiar nature of temperature-induced vesicle aggregation (TIVA) in some catanionic surfactant systems is systematically investigated. On the basis of a general analysis of the intervesicular interactions, the main driving force for this phenomenon is considered to be the intervesicular hydrophobic interaction among the exposed hydrophobic part of the surfactant headgroups. The addition of...

Owing to its unique surface-active properties, an exogenous pulmonary surfactant may become a promising drug delivery agent, in particular, acting as a vehicle for antibiotics in topical treatment of pneumonia. The purpose of this study was to assess a mutual influence of natural surfactant preparation and three antibiotics (amikacin, cefepime, and colistimethate sodium) in vitro and to identif...

Hop is an unusual homeodomain protein that was first identified in the developing heart where it functions downstream of Nkx2.5 to modulate cardiac gene expression. Hop functions through interactions with histone deacetylase (HDAC) 2 to mediate repression of cardiac-specific genes, and recent studies show that HDAC activity and HDAC2 expression are decreased in people with chronic obstructive p...

Lamellar bodies, an intracellular source of lung alveolar surfactant, were isolated from rat lung homogenates and studied in the Langmuir-Adams surface balance. By layering intact lamellar bodies on the surface of a more dense sucrose subphase, we studied the factors affecting film formation from surface tension-vs-time data and determined surface tension-surface area isotherms by compression a...