Hydrocarbon profiles on the cuticle of social insects act as multi-component recognition cues used to identify membership in a species, a colony or, within colonies, cues about its reproductive status or task group. To examine the role of structural complexity in ant hydrocarbon recognition cues, we studied the species recognition response of two ant species, Linepithema humile and Aphaenogaste...

We report the first extensive study of the spatial distribution and source apportionment of aliphatic hydrocarbons in soils from the Beijing outskirts. Mixed soil samples (5–30 cm depth) were collected for the quantitative determination of n-alkanes, isoprenoids, unresolved complex mixtures and the qualitative determination of hopanes and steranes. The total concentrations, including n-alkanes ...

When n-alkanes with 13 to 20 carbon atoms were fed to a Nocardia closely related to N. salmonicolor, the produced cellular triglycerides and aliphatic waxes invariably contained fatty acids with an even or an odd number of carbon atoms subject to this feature of the n-alkane substrate. Beta-oxidation and C(2) addition are both operative, as evidenced by the spectra of fatty acids incorporated i...

A recent study of temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) measurements of small linear alkane molecules (n-alkanes, with formula C(N)H(2N+2)) from C(0001) deposited on Pt(111) shows a linear relationship of the desorption energy with increasing n-alkane chain length N. We here present a van der Waals density functional study of the desorption barrier energy of the ten smallest n-alkanes (of car...

In Acinetobacter sp. strain ADP1, alkane degradation depends on at least five essential genes. rubAB and xcpR are constitutively transcribed. Here we describe inducible transcription of alkM, which strictly depends on the presence of the transcriptional activator AlkR. alkR itself is expressed at a low level, while a chromosomally located alkM::lacZ fusion is inducible by middle-chain-length al...

Twelve surface sediments from the southern Okinawa Trough (OT) and nine surface sediments from a nearby river, the Lanyang River (LR), with high sediment discharge were analyzed for comparison of their aliphatic hydrocarbon distributions. Performing cluster analysis on all hydrocarbon data of LR and OT sediments showed that the two areas had a similarity level of only 0.15, meaning that they we...

The hierarchization via desilication of ISI-1 zeolite, belonging to the TON type family and its impact on catalytic performance in hydroconversion model long chain n-alkanes are presented.

Pseudomonas oleovorans GPo1 can metabolize medium-chain-length alkanes by means of an enzymatic system whose induction is regulated by the AlkS protein. In the presence of alkanes, AlkS activates the expression of promoter PalkB, from which most of the genes of the pathway are transcribed. In addition, expression of the first enzyme of the pathway, alkane hydroxylase, is known to be influenced ...