Correlation of biocatalytic activity in an organic-aqueous two-liquid phase system with solvent concentration in the cell membrane

Multidrug resistance in hydrocarbon-tolerant Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria

“…The hydrophobicity of hydrocarbons can be expressed in terms of log P OW , which represents the ability of a compound to partition over an octanol water two-phase system (Sikkema et al, 1994). It has been established that log P OW is correlated with the toxicity of a specifi c hydrocarbon and that log P OW values, especially between two and four, are highly toxic for microorganisms (Osborne et al, 1990), and within this range, those with lower log P OW values are considered more toxic than those with higher log P OW values (Inoue and Horikoshi, 1991). Whether a hydrocarbon is toxic to a bacterial cell depends upon its concentration in the membrane, which relates to its water solubility and its ability to partition from the water phase to the membrane (Sikkema et al, 1994).…”

Engineering alternative butanol production platforms in heterologous bacteria

“…Despite their favorable thermodynamic properties, it has been 574 thoroughly demonstrated that the cytotoxicity of an alcohol is elevated with an increasing 575 carbon chain length (Heipieper and Debont, 1994;Osborne et al, 1990a;Vermue et al, 576 1993). Thus, the problems associated with the cytotoxicity of both conventional and 577 second-generation biofuels will remain apparent, and represent an increasing requirement 578 for robust biocatalyst platforms.…”

Effects of the membrane action of tetralin on the functional and structural properties of artificial and bacterial membranes

“…Knowledge of the toxic action of lipophilic compounds on bacterial cells is mainly restricted to the relation between the hydrophobicity (13) of a compound and its effect on a specific enzyme (19). In most studies, the cytoplasmic membrane is mentioned as a possible target, but information about the nature of the toxic action is not presented (1,19).A correlation between the hydrophobicity of a compound and its effects on cells was first observed for anesthetics (27)(28)(29), which provided a basis for calculating a dose-effect relationship. In addition, the uncoupling effects of lipophilic compounds on energy transduction have been studied in animal cells (23).…”