Methods microbial stripping

Stripping is simple, rapid, and greatly expands MCA for these kinds of compounds. Microbial stripping of this kind likely would be helpful in analytical methods other than calorimetry but oddly this has not been developed. Table I summarizes the main points from numbers of plots similar to Figures 5a and 5b. The conditions were 5 x 1010 cells/ml, 6 to 8 x 10-3 mg compound to be stripped/ml, 30 second mixing. Glucose was stripped from 15 x 10-3 mg glucose/ml. 

The performance of a biotreatment system ultimately depends on optimization of the activity of microbes and the ability to control the process parameters of the treatment system [157]. In this respect, the ability to monitor gene copy numbers and gene expression is highly useful for real time optimization of the efficiency of a biotreatment system. Advanced molecular techniques as well as low cost methods (e.g., antibody detection of enzymes based on color reaction strips fluorescence i.e., GFP marked organisms with UV light detection) can also be applied to monitor the microbial community structure, persistence of the added bacteria, and their interactions with indigenous populations. 

As with any other analytical method, MCA s capacity is enhanced if it is easy to remove interfering compounds. Microbial adaptation confers specificity in binding unwanted compounds so they can be swept out without losing the sample for analysis. Figures 5a and 5b show the data for phenol and vanillic acid stripping under convenient conditions, namely, with easily acquired amounts of stripper cells (5 x 1010 cells), and conditions where interfering compound concentrations are relatively large, i.e., up to 10 times the amount of sample for analysis. 

The use of an air-sampling machine which draws a measured volume of air from the environment and impinges it on a nutrient agar surface on either a Petri dish, a plastic strip or a membrane filter which may then be incubated with a nutrient medium. This method provides valuable information in areas of low microbial contamination, particularly if the sample is taken close to the working area. 

The original methods have been modified to increase the accuracy of microbial phosphorus estimates on specific soils, and different protocols now exist for each step of the method (Table 7.2). Chloroform is most commonly used as fumigant, either gaseous, liquid or both. The non-carcinogenic hexa-nol is also effective as a fumigation biocide (McLaughlin et al., 1986) and must replace chloroform when certain brands of resin strips are used for extraction, since these are damaged by chloroform (Biinemann et al.,... 

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