Recovery of Anthraquinones from Morinda Elliptica Cell Culture via In Situ Adsorption Using Polymeric Adsorbents

Morinda elliptica (Rubiaceae) cell suspension culture was used as a model system to understand the effects of in situ adsorption by polymeric adsorbents. The adsorption capacities of the adsorbents were determined and their equilibrium adsorption were fitted to Langmuir, Freundlich and Redlich-Petersen isotherms using linear and non-linear methods of analyses. The kinetic profiles of cell growth and anthraquinone (AQ) production were determined for cultures grown in intermediary (G) and production (P) medium strategies. Selection of the most suitable solvent was also carried out for effective recovery of AQ from the adsorbents. Co-cultivation of both untreated and pretreated adsorbents with G and P medium cultures were carried out to select a more biocompatible adsorbent that could enhance AQ production without affecting cell growth. The selected adsorbents were then further investigated for effective in situ adsorption factors in P medium strategies. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used for qualitative analyses of AQ constituents for extracts obtained from cells, culture medium and adsorbents. XAD-16 showed the highest capacity at 0.0424mg alizarin/mg adsorbents whereas XAD-4 and XAD-7 showed a capacity of 0.0113 and 0.0109mg alizarin/mg adsorbents at initial alizarin solution concentration of 200mg/L, respectively. Freundlich isotherm fitted well to both XAD-4 and XAD-7 whereas Langmuir isotherm gave the best correlation to XAD-16 over the concentration ranges studied. Ethanol was chosen as the eluting solvent with highest AQ recovery at 11.13mg/g, 5.20mg/g and 4.92mg/g eluted from XAD-4, XAD-7 and XAD-16, respectively. M. elliptica cell cultures achieved the highest biomass concentration at 36.79g/L on day 18 with 13.49mg/g DW intracellular AQ obtained in G medium strategy. In P medium strategy, the biomass concentration peaked on day 21 at 48.37g/L with intracellular AQ production recovered at 117.81mg/g DW. As 0.15g of both pretreated and untreated resins were added into cell cultures on day 15 and harvested on day 21, sodium acetate-pretreated XAD-4 stimulated AQ production to the highest extent in both G and P medium cultures. In G medium cultures, 25.67mg/g intracellular AQ was obtained, which was 1.4-fold to control. 1.04mg/L AQ recovered from the culture medium was 1.6-fold to control whereas 0.97mg/g AQ was obtained from the resins. Cell growth was comparable to control. In P medium cultures, cell growth was retarded where 15.43g/L biomass concentration were obtained, which was 23% lower than control. However, as high as 76.21mg/g intracellular AQ was obtained, which marked 1.4-fold increase to control. While 12.21mg/L extracellular AQ recovered was 6.6-fold higher than control, 1.08mg/g AQ was recovered from the resins. When treated with 0.15g sodium acetate-pretreated XAD-4 on day 18, cell growth was comparable to control after 6 days of co-cultivation. 123.83mg/g DW intracellular AQ was obtained, which was 1.7-fold to control. 14.34mg/L extracellular AQ was recovered, which was 11-fold to control, whereas 2.7mg/g AQ was desorbed from the resins. When the factors were further studied, as high as 68.99mg/g DW intracellular AQ was obtained when cultures were treated with 0.25g XAD-4 on day 18 and harvested on day 24. This was 1.2-fold higher than control. 6.32mg/L extracellular AQ was recovered, which was comparable to control, while 0.52mg/g AQ was desorbed from the resins. However, cell growth was reduced 9.5% to 34.77g/L compared to control. A few types of AQ constituents were detected from the cells, culture medium and XAD-4 resins through qualitative HPLC analyses. Four different types of AQ compound were identified. While only rubiadin-1-methyl ether was detected in the cells, both damnacanthal and nordamnacanthal were detected from the culture medium whereas lucidin-ω-methyl ether was detected from XAD-4 resins. Numerous unidentified peaks were also detected frequently from the AQ extracts

Enhanced anthraquinones production from adsorbent-treated Morinda elliptica cell suspension cultures in production medium strategy.

Continuous removal of anthraquinones (AQ) by Amberlite polymeric adsorbents (XAD-4, XAD-7 and XAD-16) through in situ adsorption in Morinda elliptica cell suspension cultures is studied for product recovery and improvement of the overall titre. Ethanol was the best eluting solvent for effective recovery of AQ from all adsorbents. Pre-treatment of XAD-4 with sodium acetate not only enhanced intracellular AQ, but also AQ release and subsequent recovery from the adsorbent. The addition of sodium acetate pretreated XAD-4 on day 18 for 6-day contact period, achieved comparable cell growth to control (41 g/L), but with 1.3-fold higher intracellular AQ (124 mg/g DW) and two-fold increase in extracellular AQ (14.3 mg/L). High amount of adsorbent and longer contact period for the cultures entering stationary growth phase, stimulated AQ release and recovery but at the expense of cell growth. With 5–8.3 g XAD-4 adsorbent per litre M. elliptica culture in production (P) medium, between 60 and 90% AQ was recovered from extracellular AQ after 24–26 days of culture period

The Taiwan ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey: Ultra-deep J and Ks Imaging in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South

We present ultra-deep J and Ks imaging observations covering a 30' * 30' area of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South (ECDFS) carried out by our Taiwan ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey (TENIS). The median 5-sigma limiting magnitudes for all detected objects in the ECDFS reach 24.5 and 23.9 mag (AB) for J and Ks, respectively. In the inner 400 arcmin^2 region where the sensitivity is more uniform, objects as faint as 25.6 and 25.0 mag are detected at 5-sigma. So this is by far the deepest J and Ks datasets available for the ECDFS. To combine the TENIS with the Spitzer IRAC data for obtaining better spectral energy distributions of high-redshift objects, we developed a novel deconvolution technique (IRACLEAN) to accurately estimate the IRAC fluxes. IRACLEAN can minimize the effect of blending in the IRAC images caused by the large point-spread functions and reduce the confusion noise. We applied IRACLEAN to the images from the Spitzer IRAC/MUSYC Public Legacy in the ECDFS survey (SIMPLE) and generated a J+Ks selected multi-wavelength catalog including the photometry of both the TENIS near-infrared and the SIMPLE IRAC data. We publicly release the data products derived from this work, including the J and Ks images and the J+Ks selected multiwavelength catalog.Comment: 25 pages, 25 figures, ApJS in pres

Design And Development Symmetrical Absorptive Mode Single Pole Double Throw (SPDT) Switch Design For WiMAX Application

The wireless communications market has gone through a tremendous incline of paradigm shift in the last several years. Broadband technology via WiMAX has rapidly become an established, global commodity required by a high percentage of the population. The persistent growth in WiMAX applications introduces tremendous challenges on component manufacturing to speed up new product release in shorter time to market. As a result, there is an increasing demand for high power with low insertion loss, high isolation and broadband PIN Diode switches for WiMAX basestation application

A simple, rapid method to isolate salt glands for three-dimensional visualization, fluorescence imaging and cytological studies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Some plants inhabiting saline environment remove salts via the salt glands embedded in the epidermal tissues. Cytological studies of salt glands will provide valuable information to our understanding of the secretory process. Previous studies on salt gland histology relied mainly on two-dimensional microscopic observations of microtome sections. Optical sectioning properties of confocal laser scanning microscope offer alternative approach for obtaining three-dimensional structural information of salt glands. Difficulty in light penetration through intact leaves and interference from neighbouring leaf cells, however, impede the acquiring of good optical salt gland sections and limit its applications in salt gland imaging. Freeing the glands from adjacent leaf tissues will allow better manipulations for three-dimensional imaging through confocal laser scanning microscopy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we present a simple and fast method for the isolation of individual salt glands released from the interference of neighbouring cells. About 100-200 salt glands could be isolated from just one cm²of <it>Avicennia </it><it>officinalis </it>leaf within hours and microscopic visualization of isolated salt glands was made possible within a day. Using these isolated glands, confocal laser scanning microscopic techniques could be applied and better resolution salt gland images could be achieved. By making use of their intrinsic fluorescent properties, optical sections of the gland cells could be acquired without the use of fluorescent probes and the corresponding three-dimensional images constructed. Useful cytological information of the salt gland cells could also be obtained through the applications of fluorescent dyes (e.g., LysoTracker^®Red, FM^®4-64, Texas Red^®).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The study of salt glands directly at the glandular level are made possible with the successful isolation of these specialized structures. Preparation of materials for subsequent microscopic observations of salt glands could be achieved within a day. Potential applications of confocal fluorescence microscopic techniques could also be performed using these isolated glands. Experiments designed and targeted directly at the salt glands were explored and cytological information obtained herein could be further incorporated towards the understanding of the mechanism underlying secretion in plant salt glands.</p

A four dukkha state-space model for hand tracking

In this paper, we propose a hand tracking method which was inspired by the notion of the four dukkha: birth, aging, sickness and death (BASD) in Buddhism. Based on this philosophy, we formalize the hand tracking problem in the BASD framework, and apply it to hand track hand gestures in isolated sign language videos. The proposed BASD method is a novel nature-inspired computational intelligence method which is able to handle complex real-world tracking problem. The proposed BASD framework operates in a manner similar to a standard state-space model, but maintains multiple hypotheses and integrates hypothesis update and propagation mechanisms that resemble the effect of BASD. The survival of the hypothesis relies upon the strength, aging and sickness of existing hypotheses, and new hypotheses are birthed by the fittest pairs of parent hypotheses. These properties resolve the sample impoverishment problem of the particle filter. The estimated hand trajectories show promising results for the American sign language

Theoretical study of the molecular processes occurring during the growth of Silicon on Si(100) and SixGe1-x/Si(100)

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

A programmable system scheduler for control oriented local area networks (COLAN)

The Control-Oriented Local Area Network (COLAN) is a distributed control system for a series of networked microcontrollers, which has been under development at Oregon State University since 1986. A reliable master controller, functioning both as a task scheduler and as a network controller, is required to allow users to perform task programming, the transmission and reception of commands and data packets, and network status monitoring. The Task Master Controller (TMC) has been designed and developed to provide these capabilities. The TMC provides an integrated environment to aid in the editing of task programs, the execution of task programs, the interpretation of program statements, the manipulation of files, the maintenance of a communication protocol between the host computer and remote microcontrollers, the maintenance of a device and task library, and the display of network status. The TMC provides two different modes of operation, a user mode and a command mode, to allow both the novice user and the experienced system developer to use the system. The TMC language also includes such basic programming language elements as conditional statements, repetitive statements, and block statements. It also includes such built-in functions as time delay, print message, reception of data, and save response. These elements provide the skilled system developer with a powerful tool to program tasks in any desired sequence. It provides the novice user with a friendly user interface to schedule tasks by selecting from a menu of high level commands included in the system library

PRESSURE BALANCE OF A MULTIPLE-LOOP CHEMICAL REACTOR

For a chemical looping (CL) process it is important to determine the optimum reactor configuration that would offer good pressure balance to ensure smooth transfer of the solids between the reactor loops as well as satisfying the oxygen carrier and heat requirements. A variation of the CL process for production of enriched hydrogen stream is investigated which adopts multiple reactor loops. A pressure balance model is developed and a methodology is proposed to find a feasible reactor configuration at an industrial scale production of hydrogen