I'm looking into treatment of wastewater and I can't seem to find a basic enough description of how microorganisms contribute to breaking down organic molecules, please help!
In making war with nature, there was risk of loss in winning.
—John McPhee, “The Control of Nature”
Super Strong Glue, Made from Proteins
An adhesive made from engineered proteins is both biocompatible and biodegradable, achieving an adhesion strength comparable to industrial strength super glue, a new study shows. The work appeared in Nature Communications this week.
How It Works: Elastin is a tough, resilient protein found in extracellular matrices. For this study, the researchers designed peptide sequences, similar to elastin, that contain repeated strings of amino acids: valine-proline-glycine-lysine-glycine. When these repetitive protein sequences are expressed within a cell, such as E. coli, the lysine amino acid in the fourth position is protonated. As the protein grows in length, it becomes increasingly positively charged.
The researchers expressed these repetitive proteins in E. coli (on a plasmid), extracted them, and mixed them with an FDA-approved surfactant used in the cosmetics industry, called sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate. This surfactant is highly negatively charged. After mixing the two compounds and centrifuging the samples, the researchers scraped off the top layer of liquid and used that as their “biological super glue.”
The team stuck the glue to all kinds of materials — aluminum, glass, steel, PVC. It stuck best to glass, steel and aluminum.
In a further round of experiments, they used the “protein glue” to seal wounds in a pig’s liver, muscle and heart tissues. It stuck well and sealed wounds in every test.
In a final experiment, the team compared the protein glue to both sutures and medical-grade glue by sealing skin wounds in rats. After eight days, the protein glue completely healed the wound and degraded from view. At that time point, the suture and medical glue-sealed wounds were still visible.
Why It Matters: Many adhesives, despite their importance for surgical wound healing, cause skin irritation or don’t stick well to wet tissues. The protein glue, developed by researchers at RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (China), binds strongly even to wet tissues, biodegrades rapidly, and is biocompatible. It can also be made quickly, using recombinant E. coli cells and FDA-approved surfactants, which might expedite its entry to the
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hey. Here's the synthetic biology research this week.
Water Dissolvable Plastics from Engineered Biofilms: Biomaterials are already amazing, but synthetic biology has pushed their properties to new heights: cellulose pellicles with embedded yeast, mushroom leather, synthetic spider silk. And now … aquaplastic.
For a study in Nature Chemical Biology, titled “Water-processable, biodegradable and coatable aquaplastic from engineered biofilms,” researchers from the Joshi lab at Harvard University created a material, produced from living cells, that can be healed or welded together using water.
Plastics take a long time to degrade, and so bio-based alternatives are desired. The researchers first engineered E. coli bacteria to produce curli fibers—long protein chains—and excrete them into their environment. The researchers then filtered the curli proteins from the cells, producing a gel that “can be cast onto surfaces or molds to create plastic films.”
Unlike traditional plastics, these “aquaplastics” don’t need heat to set; they dry and harden at room temperature. They are also flexible, and can be twisted and bent into different positions without tearing or breaking. The researchers put the aquaplastic through a wide range of tests, measuring their hardness, yield strength, and other material properties. They were similar to conventional plastics.
The aquaplastics are also biodegradable. The curli-based plastic lost 89 percent of its mass over 45 days when exposed to “a mixed culture of microorganisms obtained from the primary effluent of a wastewater treatment plant.” That is an improvement over nanocellulose—a highly biodegradable material—which lost 85 percent of its mass in that same time span.
In a final batch of experiments, the researchers used water to heal scratches and tears in the aquaplastic. Scratches “could be removed completely by spraying a few microliters of water onto the scratch and allowing it to air-dry for 2min.” A similar feat was achieved for fully cut material.
Why It Matters: Plastic pollution is an urge
... keep reading on reddit ➡Phil
Sudden Lee
Go post NSFW jokes somewhere else. If I can't tell my kids this joke, then it is not a DAD JOKE.
If you feel it's appropriate to share NSFW jokes with your kids, that's on you. But a real, true dad joke should work for anyone's kid.
Mods... If you exist... Please, stop this madness. Rule #6 should simply not allow NSFW or (wtf) NSFL tags. Also, remember that MINORS browse this subreddit too? Why put that in rule #6, then allow NSFW???
Please consider changing rule #6. I love this sub, but the recent influx of NSFW tagged posts that get all the upvotes, just seem wrong when there are good solid DAD jokes being overlooked because of them.
Thank you,
A Dad.
So far nobody has given me a straight answer
..... Will get a reward.
Well, toucan play at that game.
Windows
Martin Freeman, and Andy Serkis.
They also play roles in Lord of the Rings.
I guess that makes them the Tolkien white guys.
She said apple-lutely
'Eye-do'
This is my first post pls don't kill me lol.
The people in the comment section is why I love this subreddit!!
Cred once again my sis wants credit lol
Keep in mind, my son is 4 years old, so everything is an original to him.
I had to work late into the evening yesterday, and he was just going to bed when I got home. I had left home for the office nearly 14 hours prior, had a long day, lots of meetings, traffic, etc.
When I walked through the door, I was exhausted, run down, and starving. My wife hugged me and asked how my day was, and I replied, "Done. It was a good day, but has got me exhausted. I just want to grab a bite and go to bed. I'm hungry."
From my son's bedroom, I hear him shout, "Hi Hungry! Nice to meet you!"
Not only did it make me laugh, but I completely forgot about how hungry and tired I was. I went to his bedroom, and we laughed together about it. It was exactly what I needed.
Edit: Thanks for all the awards, kind strangers! I'll let my son know y'all enjoyed his joke too!
I heard parents named their children lance a lot.
First post please don't kill me
Edit: i went to sleep and now my inbox is dead, thank you kind strangers for the awards!
Japan.
"No, the regular kind!" I laughed.
second hand stores!
it's Hans free now..
Old Neeeeiiiiighvy
10+10 is twenty and 11+11 is twenty too
A buck-an-ear!
I Thank ye kind Matey for the booty! I be truly overwhelmed! Thank you!
Holy cow! Thank you everyone for the upvotes and awards! I wasn’t expecting this!
and not:
He should have a good vowel movement. His next diaper change could spell disaster though.
Making it all the way home and realizing that they forgot one of the containers:
Riceless
That was the punchline
