Alginate lyases show great potential for industrial and medicinal applications, especially as an attractive biocatalyst for the production of oligosaccharides with special bioactivities. A novel alginate lyase, AlyH1, from the marine bacterium Vibrio furnissii H1, which has been newly isolated from rotten seaweed, was purified and characterized. The purified enzyme showed the specific activity ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the pharmacological effects of calcium alginate on carbon tetrachloride (CCL4)-induced hepatotoxicity in rats. The study included two experiments. In the first experiment the animals were given daily CCL4 through gavage for 7 days and then 10, 50, or 250 mg/kg b.w. of calcium alginate for 21 days. The increased bilirubin level, enhanced alanine and a...

Alginate is a family of natural polysaccharides, widely used in industry and medicine for many applications, with its non toxic nature, gentle sol/gel transition procedure and low cost, alginate inferior biomechanical properties have limited its utility especially in tissue engineering. Additionally, ionically cross-linked alginate hydrogels generally lose most of their initial mechanical and s...

The string of bacteria, Vibrio. sp. QD-5 utilizing alginate, was separated from rotten kelp. The results of genome sequencing showed that the strain QD-5 contained four alginate lyase genes.One of the alginate genes Aly-IV was cloned and linked to the plasmid pET-22b (+). The heterologous expressed alginate lyase aly-IVwas characterized,which possessed the theoretical molecular mass of 62 kDa, ...

We demonstrate the ability to excite and monitor many whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of a microsphere resonator simultaneously in order to make broadband optical absorbance measurements. The 340 microm diameter microsphere is placed in a microfluidic channel. A hemispherical prism is used for coupling the WGMs into and out of the microsphere. The flat surface of the prism seals the microfluidi...

The alginate-based hydrogel was prepared as a pH-sensitive drug delivery system. To enhance the drug loading capacity, activated carbon was introduced as a drug absorbent. The iron oxide was incorporated into the alginate matrix for the magnetic transferring to the target organ. The activated carbon and iron-oxide were dispersed uniformly in the alginate hydrogel. The drug release from the algi...

Composite particles with multifunctions have been extensively utilized for various applications. Bubble particles can be applied for ultrasound-mediated imaging, drug delivery, absorbers, cell culture, etc. This study proposes a one-step strategy to obtain Pt nanoparticles loaded in alginate bubbles. A needle-based droplet formation was used to generate uniform alginate particles about 2 mm in ...

Comprehensive studies were carried out to investigate the light extraction efficiency of thin-film flip-chip (TFFC) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with anatase TiO(2) microsphere arrays by employing the finite-difference time-domain method. The quantum well position and the resonant cavity effect were studied to obtain optimum light extraction for the planar TFFC LED. Further enhancement in light...

We build a microfluidic trap-based microsphere array device. In the device, we design a novel geometric structure of the trap array and employ the hydrodynamic trapping mechanism to immobilize the microspheres. We develop a comprehensive and robust framework to optimize the values of the geometric parameters to maximize the microsphere arrays’ packing density. We also simultaneously optimize mu...

We theoretically investigate light scattering from a bi-sphere system consisting of a gold nanosphere and a lossless dielectric microsphere illuminated at a resonant optical wavelength of the microsphere. Using generalized multisphere Mie theory, we find that a gold nanosphere 100 times smaller than the dielectric microsphere can be detected with a subdiffraction resolution as fine as one-third...