Abstract
A water-soluble extract from a Hawaiian forest soil, rich in biological surfactants, has been chemically characterized by elemental, infrared, and X-ray diffraction analyses and by pyrolysis mass spectrometry. A probable interaction of these rather hydrophobic surfactants with abundant minerals in the Hawaiian soil extract is suggested. Such interactions between oxygen groups and metal ions may aid in the dispersal of the surfactants in natural waters. These biological surfactants, which were previously shown to stabilize long-lived gas microbubbles in aqueous media, were then isolated, purified, and their heterogeneity examined using a variety of biochemical methods. It is concluded that microbubble surfactant actually represents a glycopeptide-lipopolysaccharide complex, which is reversibly held together by both hydrogen bonding and nonpolar interactions. Additional data are given which suggest that the glycopeptide fraction is probably derived from the main chlorophyll-protein complex present in higher plants and green algae.
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