Carbohydrate polymers are industrially and medically important. For instance, a polysaccharide, alginate (from seaweed), is widely used in food, textile and pharmaceutical industries. Certain bacteria also produce alginate through membrane spanning multi-protein complexes. Using Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model organism, we investigated the biological function of an alginate degrading enzyme, ...

Alginates are classed as a dietary fibre and have been shown to inhibit digestive enzymes in vitro, and therefore could be used as an obesity treatment. The current study aims to assess whether alginate in a bread vehicle maintains its inhibition properties despite cooking and digestion, and may therefore be used as a potential treatment for obesity. After 180 min in a model gut that replicates...

Alginate hydrogels are well-characterized, biologically inert materials that are used in many biomedical applications for the delivery of drugs, proteins, and cells. Unfortunately, canonical covalently crosslinked alginate hydrogels are formed using chemical strategies that can be biologically harmful due to their lack of chemoselectivity. In this work we introduce tetrazine and norbornene grou...

Soft alginate hydrogels support robust neurite outgrowth, but their rapid disintegration in solutions of high ionic strength restricts them from long-term in vivo applications. Aiming to enhance the mechanical stability of soft alginate hydrogels, we investigated how changes in pH and ionic strength during gelation influence the swelling, stiffness, and disintegration of a three-dimensional (3D...

Cell microencapsulation in alginate hydrogel has shown interesting applications in regenerative medicine and the biomedical field through implantation of encapsulated tissue or for bioartificial organ development. Although alginate solution is known to have low antiviral activity, the same property regarding alginate gel has not yet been studied. The aim of this work is to investigate the poten...

A gram-negative Sphingomonas sp. strain A1 inducibly forms a mouth-like pit on the cell surface in the presence of alginate and directly incorporates polymers into the cytoplasm via the pit and ABC transporter. Among the bacterial proteins involved in import of alginate, a cell-surface EfeO-like Algp7 shows an ability to bind alginate, suggesting its contribution to accumulate alginate in the p...

In those hands I see chipped plates, plastic sofa case, dripping taps, the smell of too little tenement light, of urine rained on hapless clothes, a smell her grandson will call stale and will define everything in life he will forever run from. Her sallow hands, atrophic from not holding and not being held, like garaged brush stiffened with last year’s paint; hands that rest, as she finishes, o...

Alginate encapsu lation of an atoxigen ic strain of Aspergillu s ̄ avus was studied in order to optimize encapsu lation of fungal inocula with alginic acid . Steriliza tion by autoclav ing is known to depolymerize sodium alginate . Buffered solution s (pH 5 7± 8) reduced this effect . Autoclaving the alginate solutio n with a ® ller/nutrien t further inhibite d the depolymerization reaction . Au...

PURPOSE This article describes preparation and characterization of beads of alginate containing probiotic bacteria of Lactobacillus acidophilus DMSZ20079. METHODS Fourteen formulations using different alginate (ALG) and CaCl2 concentrations as well as hardening times were prepared using extrusion technique. The prepared beads were characterized in terms of size, morphology, encapsulation effi...

Hydrogels pose interesting features for cartilage regeneration strategies, such as the option for injectability and in situ gelation resulting in optimal filling of defects. We aimed to study different hydrogels for their capability to support chondrogenesis of human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hBMSCs). hBMSCs were encapsulated in alginate, alginate with hyaluronic acid (alginat...