A minimal salts medium adjusted to physiological pH and osmolality was buffered with either 0.3% phosphate or 1.2% borate and evaluated for antimicrobial activity. The borate-buffered medium, either with or without a carbon source, exhibited significant antimicrobial activity against 15 Pseudomonas strains, 12 strains of enteric bacteria, and 7 strains of staphylococci. The borate-buffered syst...

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization Fourier transform mass spectrometry (MALDI/FTMS), operating in the negative ion mode, is used to directly observe sugar alcohol borate complexes in a number of plant fractions. The method involves virtually no sample workup and, in the case of celery phloem sap, requires only 40 nL of sap to observe the borate complex. The isolation and characterizati...

The Tris-HCl and phosphate-borate forms of glutaminase (EC 3.5.1.2, L-glutamine amidohydrolase) are both activated and protected from inactivation by phosphate and carboxylic acids. The Tris-HCI enzyme is less sensitive to this activation, but more sensitive to glutamate inhibition than the phosphate-borate enzyme. Plots of activity against concentration of activating anions are generally sigmo...

Evidence for an “RNA world,” an episode of life on Earth during which RNA was the only genetically encoded component of biological catalysts, is found in the ribosome (1), catalytic RNA molecules (2), and contemporary metabolism (3). That RNA could form spontaneously and persist under prebiotic conditions has been doubted, however (4, 5). Ribose and its sister pentoses (arabinose, xylose, and l...

A major problem encountered in the large-scale purification of the bivalent anti-T cell immunotoxin, A-dmDT390-bisFv(G4S), from Pichia pastoris supernatants was the presence of host glycoproteins exhibiting similar charge, size, and hydrophobicity characteristics. We overcame this problem by employing borate anion exchange chromatography. The borate anion has an affinity for carbohydrates and i...

In this study, borate was found to selectively increase the stability of ribose over other aldopentoses. Ribose is the only sugar present in both early RNA-based biochemistry and contemporary DNA-based life, and the stability of ribose is of fundamental concern for determining the origin of early RNA-based biochemistry. The formose reaction is a potential process in the prebiotic synthesis of r...

N-Methylpyridinium esters derivatives of 2-methylbenzothiazole hemicyanine dyes photoinitiators/photosensitizers derived from N-propyl-3-[N-2-methylbenzothiazolo]-4-pyridyno phenylacetic acid ester diiodide and N-propyl-3-[N-2-me]thylbenzothiazolo]-4-pyridino diphenylacetic acid ester diiodide were synthesized and proposed as new photoinitiators of polymerization of 2-ethyl-(2-hydroxymethyl)-1,...

Seawater is constantly circulating through oceanic basement as a low-temperature hydrothermal fluid (<150 degrees C). In cases when ultramafic rocks are exposed to the fluids, for instance during the initial phase of subduction, ferromagnesian minerals are altered in contact with the water, leading to high pH and formation of secondary magnesium hydroxide, among other--brucite, that may scaveng...

A new family of solid polymer electrolytes based upon anionic tetrakis(phenyl)borate tetrahedral nodes and linear bis-alkyne linkers is reported. Sonogashira polymerizations using tetrakis(4-iodophenyl)borate, tetrakis(4-iodo-2,3,5,6-tetrafluorophenyl)borate and tetrakis(4-bromo-2,3,5,6-tetrafluorophenyl)borate delivered highly cross-linked polymer networks with both 1,4-diethynylbeznene and a ...