Catalytic shale gas decomposition for tunable tip/base grown CNTs and CO ₂ -free H ₂ .

Thermocatalytic decomposition (TCD) of methane can produce hydrogen and valuable nanocarbon co-products with low to near-zero CO₂ emission.

This study presents our recent findings that under microwave irradiation and/or microwave plasma conditions, nitrogen can react with methane to form ammonia and other value-added by-products, hydrogen and carbon nanotubes, at atmospheric pressure.

Genetic engineering of probiotics, like bifidobacteria, may improve their microbial cell factory economy. This work designed a novel shuttle plasmid pBPES, which bears exogenous appA and is stable within Bifidobacterium longum JCM 1217. Cloning of three predicted promoters into pBPES proved that all of them drive appA expression in B. longum JCM 1217. Transformation of plasmids pBPES-tu and pBPES-groEL into B. longum JCM1217 resulted in much more phytase secretion suggests P_tu and P_groEL are strong promoters. Further in vitro and in vivo experiments suggested B. longum JCM 1217/pBPES-tu degrades phytate efficiently. In conclusion, the study screened two stronger promoters and constructed a recombinant live probiotic strain for effectively phytase secretion and phytate degradation in gut. The strategy used in the study provided a novel technique for improving the bioaccessibility of phytate and decreasing phosphorus excretion.

A nonphotosynthetic, Gram-stain-negative, rod-shaped and motile strain, designated Pet-1T, was isolated from oil-contaminated soil collected from Daqing oil field in China. Optimal growth occurred at 37 °C, pH 5.5 and in 1 % (w/v) NaCl. Q-10 was the sole respiratory quinone. The most abundant fatty acid was C18 : 1ɷ7c/C18 : 1ɷ6c (67.4 %). The major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, aminolipid, phosphatidylethanolaine, phosphatidycholine, two unidentified lipids and two unidentified phospholipids. The genomic DNA G+C content was 69.3 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that Pet-1T shared the highest similarity (95.1 %) to Rhodobacter vinaykumarii DSM 18714T, followed by Sinorhodobacter populi sk2b1T (95.0 %) and Haematobacter massiliensis CCUG 47968T (95.0 %). In the phylogenetic tree, strain Pet-1T formed a separate branch from the closely related genera Rhodobacter, Pararhodobacter, Defluviimonas and Rhodovulum within the family Rhodobacteraceae . Based on the data from the current polyphasic study, it is proposed that the isolate is a novel species of a novel genus within the family Rhodobacteraceae , with the name Solirhodobacter olei gen. nov., sp. nov. The type strain of the type species is Pet-1T (=KCTC 72074T =CCTCC AB 2018368T).