The effectiveness of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) production with mixed microbial cultures (MMC) largely depends on the selection PHA-storing microorganisms, conventionally performed in sequencing batch reactors (SBR). These, although easily allow establishment required feast and famine (FF) regime, can represent a factor cost increase when process is scaled up. Here, novel continuous-flow for M...

Liquefied wood (LW) prepared in a microwave process was applied as a novel; inexpensive precursor feedstock for incorporation of (R)-3-hydroxyvalerate (3HV) into polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) biopolyesters in order to improve the biopolyester's material quality; Cupriavidus necator was applied as microbial production strain. For proof of concept, pre-experiments were carried out on a shake flask s...

The deoiled rice bran, industrial waste (paddy husk, potato peels and banana peels) and plasticizers were added to develop pellets after extrusion for their further use in preparing molds (pots) for horticultural use. Pellets were prepared by extrusion technology using glycerol and cashew nut shell liquid as plasticizers and were dried in a chamber with constant air circulation (1.5 m/sec). Dry...

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are renewable, biodegradable biopolymer intracellularly accumulated by wide array of microorganisms as carbon reserve. This study investigates the influence various cultural conditions on PHA production a recently isolated local species under submerged fermentation. Six producing strains were identified 16S rDNA gene sequencing and strain Priestia flexa OWO1 showed s...

Pseudomonas putida CA-3 is capable of accumulating medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates (MCL-PHAs) when growing on the toxic pollutant styrene as the sole source of carbon and energy. In this study, we report on the molecular characterization of the metabolic pathways involved in this novel bioconversion. With a mini-Tn5 random mutagenesis approach, acetyl-coenzyme A (CoA) was identified a...

The chemolithoautotrophic strain Beggiatoa sp. 35Flor shows an unusual migration behavior when cultivated in a gradient medium under high sulfide fluxes. As common for Beggiatoa spp., the filaments form a mat at the oxygen-sulfide interface. However, upon prolonged incubation, a subpopulation migrates actively downward into the anoxic and sulfidic section of the medium, where the filaments beco...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a single-stranded RNA virus that infects the hepatocytes of the liver. Infected cells become damaged and release alanine aminotransferase (ALT), which exists normally within liver cells. Our main goal in this project was to determine the usefullness of ALT levels to determine the outcome of HCV treatment and viral load levels. As part of our investigations, we first l...