Growing public health and environmental awareness accompanied by increasing number of stricter environmental regulations on wastes discharge. Attention has been focused on the use of biopolymers from renewable resources as alternatives to synthetic polymers [1]. Biopolymers are produced in nature by living organisms and plants, participate in the natural biocycle and are eventually degraded and...

BACKGROUND Spider silk is a tear-resistant and elastic biopolymer that has outstanding mechanical properties. Additionally, exiguous immunogenicity is anticipated for spider silks. Therefore, spider silk represents a potential ideal biomaterial for medical applications. All known spider silk proteins, so-called spidroins, reveal a composite nature of silk-specific units, allowing the recombinan...

Proteins and polysaccharides are common ingredients in food products. In many food formulations, proteins and polysaccharides (two major biopolymers) are used simultaneously. Understanding their interactions can help controlling physical properties and stability of formulated foods. Interactions between β-lactoglobulin (BLG) and tragacanth gum (TG) were studied in aqueous solutions at pH rangin...

It is well known that solid particles can be used to stabilise liquid/liquid interfaces (so-called Pickering emulsions) [1-3]. A challenge for food emulsion development is to extend the range of particles that can be produced at commercial scale from approved ingredients [4]. Approaches to achieve this will rely on using natural components including biopolymers and lipids. It is also of interes...

in order to know the environmental behaviour of toxic pollutants it is fundamental to understandthe role of chemical components of a material on sorption of such pollutants.in this study, the sorption of amix of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pahs) by cork fractions (i.e. raw cork (cf), free extractive cork(fef) and nonsaponifiable (desf)) has been investigated to better understand the role ...

In this work we analyze the theoretical aspects of a single polymer confined inside a cavity. The problem is of biological relevance since it is known, for instance, that molecules like proteins need an isolated environment in order to quickly and correctly reach their folded native state. The polymer is considered in the Grand Canonical ensemble of its monomeric units, where its average length...

Let d be a metric on the set FP(X) of fuzzy subsets of a finite set X. A midpoint of two fuzzy subsets μ, ν ∈ FP(X) is any fuzzy subset ξ ∈ FP(X) such that d(ξ, μ) = d(ξ, ν) = 1 2d(μ, ν). These midpoints can be used to represent “middle ways” or “compromises” between two situations described by the fuzzy subsets μ and ν. Now, the imprecise knowledge of a nucleic acid or protein sequence of leng...

Section on Tissue Biophysics and Biomimetics, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, 13 South Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA E-mail: [email protected] Summary: Aggrecan is a charged biopolymer whose complexes with hyaluronic acid provide the compressive resistance of cartilage. In cartilage extracellular matrix aggrecan-hyaluronic acid complexes are enmeshed within a network of collagen fibr...

Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of the conformations and shape of a biopolymer with varying stiffness confined to a narrow channel. Combining scaling arguments, analytical calculations, and Mont...