Search Our Scientific Publications & Authors

Environ Pollut 2021 Apr 3;283:117074. Epub 2021 Apr 3.

Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, PR China.

During the current pandemic, chemical disinfectants are ubiquitously and routinely used in community environments, especially on common touch surfaces in public settings, as a means of controlling the virus spread. An underappreciated risk in current regulatory guidelines and scholarly discussions, however, is that the persisting input of chemical disinfectants can exacerbate the growth of biocide-tolerant and antibiotic-resistant bacteria on those surfaces and allow their direct transfers to humans. For COVID-19, the most commonly used disinfecting agents are quaternary ammonium compounds, hydrogen peroxide, sodium hypochlorite, and ethanol, which account for two-thirds of the active ingredients in current EPA-approved disinfectant products for the novel coronavirus. Read More

Metab Eng 2021 Apr 9. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

School of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Institute of Chemical Processes, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea. Electronic address:

Acetoin is widely used in food and cosmetics industries as a taste and fragrance enhancer. To produce (R)-acetoin in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, acetoin biosynthetic genes encoding α-acetolactate synthase (AlsS) and α-acetolactate decarboxylase (AlsD) from Bacillus subtilis and water-forming NADH oxidase (NoxE) from Lactococcus lactis were integrated into delta-sequences in JHY605 strain, where the production of ethanol, glycerol, and (R,R)-2,3-butanediol (BDO) was largely eliminated. We further improved acetoin production by increasing acetoin tolerance by adaptive laboratory evolution, and eliminating other byproducts including meso-2,3-BDO and 2,3-dimethylglycerate, a newly identified byproduct. Read More

Biotechnol Biofuels 2021 Apr 9;14(1):92. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, Institute of Botany and Microbiology, Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 31, 3001, Leuven-Heverlee, Flanders, Belgium.

Background: Presence of inhibitory chemicals in lignocellulose hydrolysates is a major hurdle for production of second-generation bioethanol. Especially cheaper pre-treatment methods that ensure an economical viable production process generate high levels of these inhibitory chemicals. The effect of several of these inhibitors has been extensively studied with non-xylose-fermenting laboratory strains, in synthetic media, and usually as single inhibitors, or with inhibitor concentrations much higher than those found in lignocellulose hydrolysates. Read More

Braz J Microbiol 2021 Apr 9. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biotecnologia, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitoria, ES, 29040-090, Brazil.

Distillation of fermented sugarcane juice produces both rum and cachaça, significant sources of revenue in Brazil and elsewhere. In this study, we provide a genomic analysis of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain isolated from a cachaça distillery in Brazil. We determined the complete genome sequence of a strain with high flocculation capacity, high tolerance to ethanol, osmotic and heat shock stress and high fermentation rates and compared the sequence with that of the reference S288c genome as well as those of two other cachaça strains. Read More

Appl Biochem Biotechnol 2021 Apr 7. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China.

NADH-dependent reductase enzyme catalyzes the phenolic aldehyde conversion and correspondingly improves the ethanol fermentability of the ethanologenic Zymomonas mobilis. This study constructed the transcriptional landscape of mono/dioxygenase genes in Z. mobilis ZM4 under the stress of the toxic phenolic aldehyde inhibitors of 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde, syringaldehyde, and vanillin. Read More