Cutin is a support biopolyester involved in waterproofing the leaves and fruits of higher plants, regulating the flow of nutrients among various plant cells and organs, and minimizing the deleterious impact of pathogens. Despite the complexity and intractable nature of this biopolymer, significant progress in chemical composition, molecular architecture and, more recently, biosynthesis have bee...

the article addresses the contemporary quest for inexpensive carbon feedstocks to be used for cost efficient biomediated polymer production; such polymers can potentially be applied in the food technology sector, mainly for packaging purposes. in particular, the work shines a light on crude glycerol, a surplus stream of the globally tremendously emerging biodiesel industry. crude glycerol can b...

the potential and performance of various gram-negative, gram-positive and archaeal wild type microorganisms, and bacterial mixed cultures, as well as the application of genetically engineered strains as whole-cell biocatalysts for glycerol-based polyhydroxyalkanoate production are analyzed and assessed. this encompasses the comparison of growth and polyhydroxyalkanoate accumulation kinetics, th...

Many bacteria are naturally capable of accumulating biopolyesters composed of 3-hydroxy fatty acids as intracellular inclusions, which serve as storage granules. Recently, these inclusions have been considered as nano-/microbeads with surface-attached proteins, which can be engineered to display various protein-based functions that are suitable for biotechnological and biomedical applications. ...

The specific heat of isolated plant cuticles and their corresponding cuticular waxes have been measured for the physiological temperature in the range of 273-318 K at regular intervals. C(p) values ranged from 1.5 up to 4 J K(-1) g(-1) indicating a high cohesion, at the molecular level, of the molecular lipophilic components that constitute the plant cuticle. Second order phase transitions arou...

Both cutinase and lipase belong to the esterase group of enzymes (EC 3.1.1.X), which are capable of catalyzing the hydrolysis of ester bonds. Cutinase catalyzes the hydrolysis of cutin, an insoluble biopolyester which is the structural component of plant cuticles. As cutinase is an efficient catalyst in watery or organic media, it is potentially appropriate for the detergent, food and cosmetic ...

A theoretical molecular modelling study has been conducted for cutin, the biopolyester that forms the main structural component of the plant cuticle. M olecular dynamics (M D ) simulations, extended over several ten picoseconds, suggests that cutin is a moderately flexi­ ble netting with motional constraints mainly located at the cross-link sites of functional ester groups. This study also give...