Life as we know it heavily relies on biological catalysis, in fact, in a very nonromantic version of it, life could be considered as a series of chemical reactions, regulated by the guarding principles of thermodynamics. In ancient times, a beating heart was a good sign of vitality, however, to me, it is actually the presence of active enzymes that counts… Though we do not usually pay attention...

4-Nitroquinoline 1-oxide (4NQO( is a toxic and carcinogenic compound that has been reported to be subject to conjugation with glutathione (GSH). This reaction may proceed non-enzymatically or be catalyzed by GSH transferases. The non-enzymatic rate for this reaction has been reported to be very high. The purposes of this investigation were todevelop a spectrophotometric assay for the reaction o...

This work studies the use of biological and combined biological/enzymatic treatments in phenol degradation. The systems studied were conventional batch aerobic biological followed or preceded by enzymatic treatment. Tyrosinase extracted from the mushroom Agaricus bispora was employed. Biological treatment efficiently degraded effluents containing up to 420 mg.L of phenol, removing 97% of the CO...