Observer-Based Control for Uncertain Nonlinear Systems Applied to Continuous Biochemical Reactors

The purpose of this paper is to present an observer-based control design with application to continuous bioreactors. For this purpose, phenomenological bioreactor models were represented by identified linear models plus unknown modelling error terms. Therefore, an uncertainty-based observer with a polynomial structure capable of estimating the unknown modelling error of the reactor representation is coupled to a linear input-output controller. The proposed methodology was evaluated in a sulphate reduction bioprocess and an acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation process for butanol (biofuel) production, under continuous regimes. Experimentally validated mathematical models were considered for this purpose. A theoretical framework is presented to demonstrate the corresponding closed-loop stability of the systems, and numerical simulations were carried out to corroborate the satisfactory performance of the proposed methodology

A class of nonlinear adaptive controller for a continuous anaerobic Bioreactor

480-486This study proposed a proportional-integral (PI) control law for tracking of sulfate concentration trajectories in a continuous anaerobic bioreactor, where a sulfate-reducing bacterium (Desulfovibrio alaskensis 6SR) is considered for different operation purposes. Proposed controller, applied to a mathematical bioreactor´s model, described dynamics of biomass, sulfate and sulphide concentrations. Proposed control law improves performance of a well tuned PI controller

Mutational Profile and Retinal Phenotypes of PCARE-Related Cone-Rod Dystrophies in a Mexican Cohort

Purpose. The aim of the study is to describe the genotype and phenotype of a Mexican cohort with PCARE-related retinal disease. Methods. The study included 14 patients from 11 unrelated pedigrees with retinal dystrophies who were demonstrated to carry biallelic pathogenic variants in PCARE. Visual assessment methods included best corrected visual acuity, color fundus photography, Goldmann visual field test, kinetic perimetry, dark/light adapted chromatic perimetry, full-field electroretinography, autofluorescence imaging, and spectral domain-optical coherence tomography imaging. Genetic screening was performed either by gene panel sequencing or by exome sequencing. Results. According to the results of multimodal imaging and functional tests, all 14 patients were diagnosed with cone-rod dystrophy. Six different PCARE pathogenic alleles were identified in our cohort, including three novel mutations: c.3048_3049del (p.Tyr1016∗), c.3314_3315del (p.Ser1105∗), and c.551A > G (p.His184Arg). Notably, alleles p.His184Arg, p.Arg613∗, and p.Arg984∗ were present in 18 of the 22 (82%) PCARE alleles from probands in our cohort. Conclusion. Our work expands the PCARE mutational profile by identifying three novel pathogenic variants causing retinal dystrophy. While phenotypic variations occurred among patients, a cone-rod dystrophy pattern was observed in all affected individuals