Phytoplasma cause many important vector-borne and graft-transmissible plant diseases. They can affect different host plants. In this work we concentrated on the optimization of diagnostic procedures of pyhtoplasma on fruit trees. The extraction of DNA from the samples is necessary for the molecular analyses that follow. In our experiment we compared two extraction methods – CTAB and automatic e...

In recent days Zinc oxide (ZnO) attracted much interest due to its versatibility and size dependent opto-electronic properties. ZnO flake structures have been hydrothermally synthesized in the reaction of aqueous solution of cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) and NaOH at 373.15 K. It was found that, the volume of added ammonia, surfactant (CTAB), and mixed solvent play crucial roles in mor...

The efficacy of the surfactants SDS and CTAB in detaching P. fluorescens from glass surface was evaluated in a parallel plate flow chamber. This device enables “in situ” determinations of cells detachment following the application of surfactants under well controlled hydrodynamic conditions. The results showed that SDS was able to remove almost all adhering bacteria in a short period of time, w...

There is a growing interest in synthetic, chemical systems capable of undergoing autonomous shape changes and/or self-motion. Important examples include solid objects such as catalytic Au/Pt nanorods, mechanically responsive gels driven by oscillating reactions, and liquid systems in which self-motion is induced by surface-tension gradients. The latter class of systems includes iodine/iodide-co...

Gold nanorods coated with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), a cationic micellar surfactant used in nanorod synthesis, were rapidly and irreversibly internalized by KB cells via a nonspecific uptake mechanism. Internalized nanorods near the cell surface were monitored by two-photon luminescence (TPL) microscopy and observed to migrate toward the nucleus with a quadratic rate of diffusion. T...

A novel artificial peroxidase (AP) with highly catalytic efficiency was designed using hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB, 3 mM) nano-micelles and bovine heart cytochrome c (Cyt c, 0.5 µM) in 100 mM, pH 8.0 phosphate buffer at 25°C. The catalytic rate (kcat) and Michaelis-Menten (Km) of the AP were determined to be 0.311 ± 0.013 s(-1) and 8.64 ± 0.6 µM. The catalytic efficiency was 0.03...

The chemiluminescent properties of the estrogenic mycotoxin zearalenone in the presence of aqueous micellar media were investigated using steady state fluorescence techniques. Micelles of surfactants sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), and non-ionic Triton X-100 enhanced the fluorescence intensity of zearalenone in aqueous solutions. The binding constants ha...