Valorisation of Biowastes for the Production of Green Materials Using Chemical Methods

With crude oil reserves dwindling, the hunt for a sustainable alternative feedstock for fuels and materials for our society continues to expand. The biorefinery concept has enjoyed both a surge in popularity and also vocal opposition to the idea of diverting food-grade land and crops for this purpose. The idea of using the inevitable wastes arising from biomass processing, particularly farming and food production, is, therefore, gaining more attention as the feedstock for the biorefinery. For the three main components of biomass—carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins—there are long-established processes for using some of these by-products. However, the recent advances in chemical technologies are expanding both the feedstocks available for processing and the products that be obtained. Herein, this review presents some of the more recent developments in processing these molecules for green materials, as well as case studies that bring these technologies and materials together into final products for applied usage

In vivo Magnetic Resonance Microscopy and Hypothermic Anaesthesia of a Disease Model in Medaka

In medical and pharmacological research, various human disease models in small fish, such as medaka (Oryzias latipes), have been created. To investigate these disease models noninvasively, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is suitable because these small fish are no longer transparent as adults. However, their small body size requires a high spatial resolution, and a water pool should be avoided to maximize the strength of MRI. We developed in vivo magnetic resonance microscopy (MR microscopy) without a water pool by combining hypothermic anaesthesia and a 14.1 T MR microscope. Using in vivo MR microscopy, we noninvasively evaluated the hepatic steatosis level of a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease model in medaka and followed the individual disease progression. The steatosis level was quantified by the MRI-estimated proton density fat-fraction (MRI-PDFF), which estimates the triglyceride fat concentration in liver tissue and is recognized as an imaging biomarker. The MRI-PDFF results agreed with a histological analysis. Moreover, we optimized the hypothermic anaesthesia procedure to obtain a recovery proportion of 1 in the experiment involving MR microscopy. Recovered medaka could not be distinguished from naïve medaka after the experiment. Therefore, the in vivo MR microscopy will expand the possibilities of a human disease model in fish