In this study, forty-two fungi from soil were isolated and tested for their carboxymethyl cellulase (CMCase) and xylanase activities. From all isolates, the fungal isolate FR60, which was identified as Aspergillus aculeatus Iizuka, showed high activities in both CMCase and xylanase with 517 mU/mg protein and 550 mU/mg protein, respectively. The crude enzyme from A. aculeatus Iizuka FR60 could h...

In biofuel production from lignocellulose, low thermostability and product inhibition strongly restrict the enzyme activities and production process. Application of multiple thermostable glycoside hydrolases, forming an enzyme "cocktail", can result in a synergistic action and therefore improve production efficiency and reduce operational costs. Therefore, increasing enzyme thermostabilities an...

High costs and low production efficiency are a serious constraint to bio-based xylitol production. For industrial-scale production of xylitol, a plasmid-free Escherichia coli for arabitol-free xylitol production from corncob hemicellulosic hydrolysate has been constructed. Instead of being plasmid and inducer dependent, this strain relied on multiple-copy integration of xylose reductase (XR) ge...

As a versatile and valuable intermediate, furfuryl alcohol (FOL) has been widely used in manufacturing resins, vitamin C, perfumes, lubricants, plasticizers, fuel additives, biofuels, other furan-based chemicals. This work developed an efficient hybrid strategy for the valorization of lignocellulosic biomass to FOL. Corncob (75 g/L) was catalyzed with heterogenous catalyst Sn-SSXR (2 wt%) gener...

Method Twenty female Sprague Dawley rat (SD rat) were randomly divided into two groups according to their bedding types. The 1 group was raised in wood shaving bedding as a control and 2 one was in corncob bedding as an endocrine disrupting agent. Each group was checked daily for the first day of vaginal opening, and their vaginal smears were collected to determine estrous cyclicity after vagin...

A semi-field bioassay method using commonly available laundry tubs evaluated efficacy and residual activity of 6 granular corncob formulations of Bacillus thuringiensis serovar israelensis against laboratory-reared late 3rd- and early 4th-instar larvae of Aedes taeniorhynchus introduced to the tubs. These formulations produced appreciable larval mortalities (up to 75%) for 9 days posttreatment,...