Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology
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Bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) is a biophysical technique used to monitor proximity within live cells. BRET exploits the naturally occurring phenomenon of dipole-dipole energy transfer from a donor enzyme (luciferase) to an acceptor fluorophore following enzyme-mediated oxidation of a substrate. This results in production of a quantifiable signal that denotes proximity between proteins and/or molecules tagged with complementary luciferase and fluorophore partners. ⋯ These advances have exciting potential to produce new experimental methods to monitor protein-protein interactions (PPIs), protein-ligand interactions, and/or molecular proximity. In addition to NanoBRET, Nluc has also been exploited to produce NanoBiT technology, which further broadens the scope of BRET to monitor biological function when NanoBiT is combined with an acceptor. BRET has proved to be a powerful tool for monitoring proximity and interaction, and these recent advances further strengthen its utility for a range of applications.
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Front Bioeng Biotechnol · Jan 2019
The Correlation Between Quality of Life and Acceptability of Disability in Patients With Facial Burn Scars.
The purpose of our research is to understand the status of the quality of life and level of disability acceptance in patients with facial burn scars and to explore the correlation between quality of life and disability acceptance and how to improve nursing care for these patients. Patients with facial burn scars were investigated in an outpatient clinic of tertiary hospitals from September 2015 to February 2016. A cross-sectional survey was conducted. ⋯ The results of Spearman correlation analysis showed that the overall quality of life score of facial burn scar patients was positively correlated with disability acceptance (r = 0.245, p = 0.007). The quality of life of facial burn scar patients will improve with the improvement of disability acceptance level. Therefore, medical staff can improve the quality of life of patients by improving their disability acceptance level.
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Front Bioeng Biotechnol · Jan 2019
How Low Can You Go: Methane Production of Methanobacterium congolense at Low CO2 Concentrations.
Autotrophic hydrogenotrophic methanogens use H2/CO2 as sole carbon and energy source. In contrast to H2, CO2 is present in high concentrations in environments dominated by methanogens e.g., anaerobic digesters (AD), and is therefore rarely considered to be a limiting factor. Nonetheless, potential CO2 limitation can be relevant in the process of biomethanation, a power-to-gas technology, where biogas is upgraded by the addition of H2 and ideally reduce the CO2 concentration in the produced biogas to 0-6%. ⋯ However, DIC is not a limiting factor in ADs running under standard operating conditions. For biomethanation, the results are applicable for both in situ and ex situ biomethanation reactors and show that biogas can be upgraded to concentrations of 2% CO2 (98% CH4) while still retaining 80% V max at pH 7.5 evaluated from M. congolense. Since DIC concentration can vary significantly with pH and pCO2 during biomethanation, monitoring DIC concentration through pH and pCO2 is therefore important for keeping optimal operational conditions for the biomethanation process.