No abstract

The genus Aspergillus is renowned for its ability to produce a myriad of bioactive secondary metabolites. Although the propensity of biosynthetic genes to form contiguous clusters greatly facilitates assignment of putative secondary metabolite genes in the completed Aspergillus genomes, such analysis cannot predict gene expression and, ultimately, product formation. To circumvent this deficiency, we have examined Aspergillus nidulans microarrays for expressed secondary metabolite gene clusters by using the transcriptional regulator LaeA. Deletion or overexpression of laeA clearly identified numerous secondary metabolite clusters. A gene deletion in one of the clusters eliminated the production of the antitumor compound terrequinone A, a metabolite not described, from A. nidulans. In this paper, we highlight that LaeA-based genome mining helps decipher the secondary metabolome of Aspergilli and provides an unparalleled view to assess secondary metabolism gene regulation.

Calcium oxide has been proved to be a suitable sorbent for high temperature CO 2 capture processes based on the cyclic carbonation-calcination reaction. It is important to have reaction rate models that are able to describe the behavior of CaO particles with respect to the carbonation reaction. Fresh calcined lime is known to be a reactive solid toward carbonation, but the average sorbent particle in a CaO-based CO 2 capture system experiences many carbonation-calcination cycles and the reactivity changes with the number of cycles. This study applies the random pore model (RPM) to estimate the intrinsic rate parameters for the carbonation reaction and develops a simple model to calculate particle conversion with time as a function of the number of cycles, partial pressure of CO 2 , and temperature. This version of the RPM model integrates knowledge obtained in earlier works on intrinsic carbonation rates, critical product layer thickness, and pore structure evolution in highly cycled particles.

Sesquiterpene lactones (SLs) are the active compounds of a variety of traditionally used medicinal plants from the Asteraceae family. They are known to possess a considerable antiinflammatory activity in different inflammation models. They inhibit the transcription factor NF-kappaB probably by alkylating cysteine38 in the DNA binding domain of the p65 subunit. Here we investigate a set of 103 different sesquiterpene lactones representing 6 structural groups (44 germacranolides, 16 heliangolides, 22 guaianolides, 9 pseudoguaianolides, 2 hypocretenolides, 10 eudesmanolides) for their NF-kappaB inhibiting properties and the resulting IC(100)-values were submitted to a QSAR study. Properties important for the inhibition potency are discussed for the whole data set and for subsets of the different structural classes.

a b s t r a c tThis work presents a conceptual design of a novel method to obtain hydrogen and/or electricity from natural gas and a concentrated stream of CO 2 suitable for permanent geological storage. The method is based on the well known Sorption Enhanced Reforming (SER) principles for H 2 production using a CaO/CaCO 3 chemical loop. A second chemical loop of Cu/CuO is employed to solve the problem of endothermic CaCO 3 calcination in order to regenerate the sorbent and release the concentrated CO 2 . The reduction reaction of CuO with natural gas, CO or H 2 is shown to be feasible for providing the necessary heat for calcination. A preliminary design of the process has been carried out based on the principles of fixed bed operation and high temperature PSA, making use of the information offered by the literature to define the operating best conditions for the key gas-solid reaction steps and assuming ideal plug flow behaviour in all the reactors during the chemical reactions and gas-solid heat transfer. This makes it possible to define the precise operating windows for the process, so that the reactors can operate close to neutrally thermal conditions. Special material properties (particularly the Ca/inert and Cu/inert ratios) are required, but these are shown to be within the limits of what have been reported in the literature for other gas/solid reaction processes using the same reactions. The conclusion is that there is a great potential for achieving a high degree of energy efficiency with the proposed process by means of a sequence of reactions under the conditions described in this work.