Main Variables Affecting a Chemical-Enzymatic Method to Obtain Protein and Amino Acids from Resistant Microalgae

he development of microalgae uses requires further investigation in cell disruption alternatives to reduce the costs associated to this processing stage. This study aimed to evaluate the main variables affecting an extraction method to obtain protein and amino acids from microalgae. The method was based on a sequential alkaline-enzymatic process, with separate extractions and noncontrolled pH, and was applied to fresh biomass of a resistant species. The processed microalgae were composed of a consortium with Nannochloropsis sp. as predominant species. After the optimization of the pH of the alkaline reaction, the effect of the time of the alkaline reaction (30-120min), the time (30-120min) and temperature (40-60 degrees C) of the enzymatic reaction, and the biomass concentration (50-150mgml(-1)), on the extraction yields of protein and free amino nitrogen (FAN) and on the final concentration of protein in the extract, was studied using a response surface methodology. Even though all the variables and some interactions among them had a significant effect, the biomass concentration was the most important factor affecting the overall process. The results showed relevant information about the different options in order to maximize not only the response variables individually but also different combinations of them. Assays with optimized values reached maximum yields of 80.3% and 1.07% of protein (% of total protein) and FAN (% of total biomass), respectively, and a protein concentration in the extract of 15.2mgml(-1). The study provided the essential information of an alternative approach to obtain protein and amino acids from fresh biomass of resistant microalgae with a high yield, also opening perspectives for further research in particular aspects

Discurso pronunciado por el Dr. Jorge Moreno López

Con mucha emoción y orgullo he venido desde Suecia para esta ceremonia de incorporarme, en calidad de profesor honorario, al plantel de investigación y docencia de la Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria de la Decana Universidad de Las Américas. Como veterinario ecuatoriano, graduado en Quito, con toda mi trayectoria científica y docente en Suecia, he tenido el privilegio de implementar proyectos internacionales auspiciados por la FAO/OIEA y por el gobierno sueco, particularmente en América Latina. Esta circunstancia, me han motivado a escoger como tema para esta especial ocasión, la Cooperación Internacional, de la que no podemos prescindir en este mundo globalizado. Este tema con muchos enfoques políticos, económicos, sociales, humanitarios etc. se ve claramente representado en las actividades de organismos internacionales, regionales y nacionales como la FAO/OIEA, OPS, OIE, OMS, ICA, OIRSA, CIP etc

NeuBTF: Neural fields for BTF encoding and transfer

Neural material representations are becoming a popular way to represent materials for rendering. They are more expressive than analytic models and occupy less memory than tabulated BTFs. However, existing neural materials are immutable, meaning that their output for a certain query of UVs, camera, and light vector is fixed once they are trained. While this is practical when there is no need to edit the material, it can become very limiting when the fragment of the material used for training is too small or not tileable, which frequently happens when the material has been captured with a gonioreflectometer. In this paper, we propose a novel neural material representation which jointly tackles the problems of BTF compression, tiling, and extrapolation. At test time, our method uses a guidance image as input to condition the neural BTF to the structural features of this input image. Then, the neural BTF can be queried as a regular BTF using UVs, camera, and light vectors. Every component in our framework is purposefully designed to maximize BTF encoding quality at minimal parameter count and computational complexity, achieving competitive compression rates compared with previous work. We demonstrate the results of our method on a variety of synthetic and captured materials, showing its generality and capacity to learn to represent many optical properties.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. Accepted to Computers & Graphics (Special Section on CEIG 2023). Project Website: https://carlosrodriguezpardo.es/projects/NeuBTF

Versatile method to obtain protein- and/or amino acid-enriched extracts from fresh biomass of recalcitrant microalgae without mechanical pretreatment

The aim of the study was to develop a sequential alkaline-enzymatic method to obtain protein- and/or amino acid-enriched extracts from fresh biomass of recalcitrant microalgae without any supplementary pretreatment. The effects of the initial biomass concentration, the use of freeze-dried or fresh biomass, enzyme dosage, processing procedure (two-step and single-step, with and without pH control) and species were studied. The method was evaluated with a consortium of microalgae isolated from a landfill leachate and was tested on other recognized recalcitrant microalgae such as Chlorella vulgaris, Nannochloropsis gaditana and Scenedesmus obliquus. The approach includes alternative pathways, provides high extraction yields of proteinaceous material and produces protein- and/or hydrolyzed peptide-enriched extracts with different amino acid compositions (e.g., a pathway without pH control achieves a yield of 81% of total protein and a concentration of 29 mg mL−1 of proteinaceous material). The versatility in processing procedures and the range of products obtained, along with applicability to different microalgal species, make this method an interesting option for algae biomass treatment. Furthermore, the high yield and simplicity from a technological point of view, gives it a great potential for process development and encourages further research for a wide variety of applications, such as feed, biostimulants, culture media, bulk chemicals, and biogas

DISTRIBUCIÓN DE INSTALACIONES: MÉTODOS DE SOLUCIÓN Y APLICACIONES RECIENTES

In this work is presented a state-of-art review of the Facility Layout Problem (FLP) and the its different solution methods, such as heuristic, metaheuristic and exact methods. Principally emphasizing in metaheuristic techniques such as Genetic Algorithm, Simulated Annealing, Particle Swarm Optimization, Ant Colony Optimization, Tabu Search and hybrid algorithm applied in the last years. Additionally some applications are shown of these methods in real and simulated scenarios

Intrinsic Images by Clustering

International audienceDecomposing an input image into its intrinsic shading and reflectance components is a long-standing ill-posed problem. We present a novel algorithm that requires no user strokes and works on a single image. Based on simple assumptions about its reflectance and luminance, we first find clusters of similar reflectance in the image, and build a linear system describing the connections and relations between them. Our assumptions are less restrictive than widely-adopted Retinex-based approaches, and can be further relaxed in conflicting situations. The resulting system is robust even in the presence of areas where our assumptions do not hold. We show a wide variety of results, including natural images, objects from the MIT dataset and texture images, along with several applications, proving the versatility of our method

New experimental insights into magneto-mechanical rate dependences of magnetorheological elastomers

Magnetorheological elastomers (MREs), consisting of an elastomeric matrix filled with magnetic particles, are one of the most promising multifunctional composites. The main advantage of these materials is their response to external magnetic fields by mechanically deforming and/or changing their magnetorheological properties. This multi-physical nature makes them ideal candidates for timely applications in soft robotics and bioengineering. Although several works have addressed the magneto-mechanical coupling in these composites from both experimental and modelling approaches, there is still a big gap of knowledge preventing the full understanding of their underlying physics. In this regard, there is no experimental work addressing a comprehensive magneto-mechanical characterisation combining different MRE configurations, mechanical deformation modes and magnetic conditions. Furthermore, the interplays of rate dependences into such magnetorheological behaviour still remain elusive. In this work, we provide an unprecedented experimental characterisation of a soft MRE considering more than 100 different experimental conditions involving more than 600 tests. The experiments include monotonous uniaxial compression at different deformation rates and magnetic conditions, magneto-mechanical DMA tests, relaxation tests, oscillatory shear tests at different deformation rates and magnetic conditions, magneto-mechanical shear frequency sweep tests, and novel magneto-mechanical experiments. The results obtained in this work provide full characterisation of soft MREs with a special focus on rate dependences, forming the basis to explain novel multifunctional mechanisms identified behind their coupled response. In addition, it opens the door to new constitutive and modelling approaches.The authors acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 947723, project: 4D-BIOMAP). MAM acknowledges support from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Spain (FPU19/03874) and DGG acknowledges support from the Talent Attraction grant (CM 2018 - 2018-T2/IND-9992) from the Comunidad de Madri

Application of a Microalgal Peptide-Enriched Extract as Media Component in E. coli Culture

This study evaluated the feasibility of applying a microalgal peptide-enriched extract, obtained through a sequential alkaline and enzymatic method, as a fundamental media component in Escherichia coli culture. The results demonstrated that the extract is viable as the primary nutrient source for E. coli cultures (wild type), even as a complete substitute for the widely used Luria-Bertani (LB) medium, using an extract dilution of 1:3. Its application in a proportion carbon limiting (dilution 1:7), with glycerol supplementation at the early stationary phase, improved the nutrient use efficiency and controlled the undesirable acetate production. Furthermore, this last strategy applied in an E. coli mutant (M4-Delta iclR) enhanced the production of succinate by 67.3% compared with the M9 medium. The innovative approach proposed in this study opens a wide range of applications and studies related to the production of bio-compounds through diverse microorganisms

A Concise Synthesis of a BODIPY-Labeled Tetrasaccharide Related to the Antitumor PI-88

A convergent synthetic route to a tetrasaccharide related to PI-88, which allows the incorporation of a fluorescent BODIPY-label at the reducing-end, has been developed. The strategy, which features the use of 1,2-methyl orthoesters (MeOEs) as glycosyl donors, illustrates the usefulness of suitably-designed BODIPY dyes as glycosyl labels in synthetic strategies towards fluorescently-tagged oligosaccharides.This research was funded by Spanish MINISTERIO DE ECONOMIA Y COMPETITIVIDAD, GOBIERNO DE ESPAÑA (projects MAT2017–83856-C3-1-P and 3-P, PiD2020-1147555GB-C33), the MINISTERIO DE CIENCIA INNOVACION Y UNIVERSIDADES (project RTI2018-094862-B-I00), and the GOBIERNO VASCO (project IT912-16)