Plant Breakdown Structure

The major somce of lycopene is tomato products but it also occurs in water melons, guavas, pink grapefruit, and in small quantities in at least 40 plants. The structure of lycopene is shown in Fig. 12.2. It is a long chain conjugated hydrocarbon and its structure suggests that it would be easily oxidized in the presence of oxygen and isomerized to cis compounds by heat. Both of these reactions occur in purified solutions of lycopene but in the presence of other compounds normally present in tomatoes, lycopene is more stable. Actually the absorption of lycopene in the human gut is increased by heat treatment probably because the breakdown of the plant cells makes the pigment more accessible. Preparations from tomatoes are widely used in pizza, pasta, soups, drinks and any product compatible with the flavor and color of tomatoes. 

While comparison of the absolute capital costs and costs of electricity among different power systems is difficult and uncertain, the structure of these costs is rather typical, and the costs of component units are usually within known ranges. For an oxygen-blown IGCC power system, the breakdown of the capital cost for the four component units is air separation plant (11 to 17 percent), fuel gas plant (33 to 42 percent), combined-cycle unit (32 to 39 percent), and balance of plant (2 to 21 percent). The breakdown of the cost of elec tricity is capital charge (52 to 56 percent), operating and maintenance (14 to 17 percent), and fuel (28 to 32 percent). 

Chlorophyll catabolism has been intensively studied in some plants, e.g., rape-seed, barley, spinach, tobacco, Cercidiphyllum japonicum, Lolium temulentum, Liq-quidambar styraciflua and Arabidopsis thaliana, which present all NCC catabolites with similar basic structures. " This suggests a uniform breakdown of chlorophyll in which the oxidative opening of pheophorbide a seems to be a key step. Structural differences among the compounds have been related to at least six basic types of peripheral transformations. Some of them seem to operate either in sequence or in parallel, depending on the plant species, which caused the appearances of different... 

However, this accumulation has not been unequivocally proven. The recent identihcation of urobilinogenoidic linear tetrapyrroles in extracts from primary leaves of barley indicated that further degradation of the v-NCC 1 can take place. While the monoxygenation of pheophorbide a in the earlier phases of chlorophyll breakdown in higher plants appears to be a remarkably stringent entry point, the rather diverse structures of NCCs may indicate that the later phases of the detoxi-hcation process follow less strictly regulated pathways." ... 

When added to water as an aquatic herbicide, acrolein undergoes rapid decomposition, especially in sunlight. At the same time, it reacts rapidly with amines, alcohols, and mercaptans of aquatic plants, destroying cell structure and killing the plants (Parent et al. 1992). Mammals drinking acrolein-contaminated water rapidly convert acrolein to saturated alcohol compounds because of the low pH in the upper portion of their GI tracts the primary breakdown product is beta-propionaldehyde (USEPA 1980). 

Inhomogeneity is quite naturally predicted to occur in this class of complexes. This is not only due to the different possible breakdown pathways in soils, sediments, etc., but is also due to the multiplicities of naturally occurring precursors in living organisms. For example, a number of known chlorophyll structures are shown in (23). The structural complexity is even more elaborate for the haems. Mixtures in geological media thus are to be expected. However, it should be pointed out that the amount of porphyrins from plant sources is overwhelming compared to that... 

Heme degradation Bile pigments exist in both the plant and animal kingdoms, and are formed by breakdown of the cyclic tetrapyrrole structure of heme. In animals this pathway is an excretory system by which the heme from the hemoglobin of aging red blood cells, and other hemoproteins, is removed from the body. In the plant kingdom, however, heme is broken down to form bile pigments... 

Similar reactions occur in red algae and cyanobacteria but because the full spectrum of sunlight does not always penetrate very far below the surface of the sea they make use of different pigments. These may be structurally similar to those used by plants, and are therefore classed as bacteriochlorophylls, or belong to the structurally distinct phycobilin class of compounds. Unlike chlorophyll, which has a cyclic tetrapyrrole structure containing magnesium, the phycobilins are acyclic tetrapyrroles with similarities to the breakdown product of the haem ring, bilirubin. 

Many cells are susceptible to the appreciable shearing forces that arise on repeated freezing and thawing, or to hypotonic buffers which cause cells to swell up, and in certain cases to lyse this is particularly the case for cells in soft plant and animal tissue. Such treatments only rarely lead to complete cell lysis, the exceptions to this being erythrocytes and reticulocytes which are lysed quantitatively under hypotonic conditions. Non-mechanical homogenisation is of particular relevance to cells like yeast which are refractory to other procedures. One of the simplest procedures for yeast, which can certainly not be described as gentle, is toluene-induced autolysis. This is carried out at room temperature and leads to permeabilisation of the cell walls this causes various hydrolases to be activated causing breakdown not only of the cell structure, but also (undesirably) of many sensitive proteins and nucleic acids in the cell. Consequently, this process is mainly of historical interest. 

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