Artificial micro-environments

Abian A, Wilson L, Mateo C (2002) Preparation of artificial hyper-hydrophilic micro-environments (polymeric salts) surrounding enzyme molecules. New enzyme derivatives to be used in any reaction medium. J Mol Catal B Enzym 19-20 295-303 Abian A, Mateo C, Eemandez-Lorente G et al. (2003) Improving the industrial production of 6-APA enzymatic hydrolysis of penicillin G in the presence of organic solvents. Biotechnol Prog 19 1639-1642... 

To study quantitatively the kinetics of lipid oxidation and antioxidation, a standard way of controlling and measuring the rate of free radical initiation is to use thermally labile azo compounds. These artificial initiators generate radicals at a reproducible, well-established and constant rate. In the presence of initiators such as a,a-azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) or benzoyl peroxide, the overriding initiation can be directly related to the rate of production of the initiator radical. Also, by using either water-soluble or lipid-soluble azo dyes, these compounds can initiate radicals at known specific micro-environments. 

The toolkit does not artificially fragment unit operations such as mixing and heat exchange across different modules, but integrates them into individual function-oriented micro reaction modules. A controlled thermal environment and continuous monitoring of the micro reaction process with sensors and analyzers are other crucial elements of the concept. 

Microbiological analyses are based on the cultivation of microbial populations in artificial environments (culture media) under laboratory conditions. Most micro-organisms will grow if there is sufficient carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) present and will increase in numbers by simple division into two. In liquid media growth becomes visible because the medium becomes turbid. Thus, the presence of only one micro-organism can result, after incubation for a certain time at a specific temperature, in a completely turbid medium, because of the bacterial multiplication. 

Sinnett-Jones, P.E., Wharton, J.A. and Wood, R.J.K. (2005) Micro-abrasion-corrosion of a CoCrMo alloy in simulated artificial hip joint environments. Wear, 259(2), 898-909. 

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