Biochemical Sciences Research Articles

Process analytical technologies in food industry - challenges and benefits: A status report and recommendations.

Process analytical technologies in food industry - challenges and benefits: A status report and recommendations.

Metodologia Científica para as Ciências Sociais Aplicadas: análises críticas sobre métodos e tipologias de pesquisas e destaque de contribuições de Marx, Weber E Durkheim

Este estudo tem o objetivo de realizar críticas sobre a importância do método científico para realizar e divulgar as pesquisas nas ciências sociais aplicadas e sobre as tipologias de pesquisas, bem como destacar contribuições de Marx, Weber e Durkheim para a metodologia científica. Foi realizada uma revisão na literatura sobre método científico, técnicas de pesquisa, o termo pesquisa e metodologias científicas. Os resultados da investigação revelaram que é fundamental o investigador acadêmico utilizar um método científico para realizar e divulgar seus trabalhos acadêmicos nas ciências sociais aplicadas em comparação com as ciências bioquímicas e ciência da computação e na literatura apontada. Quanto às contribuições para a metodologia científica, entre as várias destacam: Marx, a análise dialogada, dialética, contundente, explicativa do fenômeno social, a necessidade de se buscar compreender os fenômenos como totalidades históricas e concretas; Weber, a distinção entre “juízos de fato” e os “juízos de valor” para dar objetividade para as ciências sociais e Durkheim, a necessidade de conceituar muito bem o seu objeto de estudo e rejeitar os dados sensíveis e imbuir-se do espírito de fazer descobertas e de ser surpreendido com os resultados.

Twenty years later, the evolution of origami DNA

Twenty years ago Trends in Biochemical Sciences published an innovative origami template for modeling the DNA double helix. Presented here are adaptations of this, including a chemical structure designed for transparent acetate, plus hybrid DNA/RNA, RNA hairpin, and single-stranded models. These models are useful teaching tools for understanding the 3D structure of DNA.

Ultrasensitive and label-free molecular-level detection enabled by light phase control in magnetoplasmonic nanoantennas.

Systems allowing label-free molecular detection are expected to have enormous impact on biochemical sciences. Research focuses on materials and technologies based on exploiting localized surface plasmon resonances in metallic nanostructures. The reason for this focused attention is their suitability for single molecule sensing, arising from intrinsically nanoscopic sensing volume, and the high sensitivity to the local environment. Here we propose an alternative route, which enables radically improved sensitivity compared torecently reported plasmon-based sensors. Such high sensitivity is achieved by exploiting the control of the phase of light in magnetoplasmonic nanoantennas. We demonstrate a manifold improvement of refractometric sensing figure-of-merit. Most remarkably, we show a raw surface sensitivity (i.e., without applying fitting procedures) of two orders of magnitude higher than the current values reported for nanoplasmonic sensors. Such sensitivity corresponds to a mass of ~0.8 ag per nanoantenna of polyamide-6.6 (n=1.51), which is representative for a large variety of polymers, peptides and proteins.

Comparative analysis of the biochemistry undergraduate courses in Brazil

INTRODUCTION: The economic and social development of Brazil during the recent decades has contributed to the installation of several new undergraduate and graduate study programs, as is the case of the undergraduate biochemistry programs at UFV, UFSJ and UEM. The new biochemical professionals are being prepared to work mainly in Industries, research Institutes, government agencies and Universities in all fields that involve Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The aim of this study was to conduct a comparative analysis of the courses in Biochemistry in Brazil. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Comparative analysis of the course units of the UFV, UFSJ and UEM programs, centered on the curricula contents and organization and on the profiles of the students in terms of parameters such as the number of admissions and the graduation completion rates. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The UFV and UEM programs present a very similar distribution of workload over the biological, exact sciences, humanities, biochemical specialties and technological applications. The UFSJ program presents higher workloads in the areas of biological sciences and technological applications. No significant differences in the distribution of the workloads of mandatory and optional disciplines, complementary activities and supervised activities were detected. Over the past five years there was a decrease in the number of students that abandoned the programs, despite the increased retention time in the three courses. Most graduated students at both UFV and UFSJ continue their academic career toward the Master or Doctor degrees. CONCLUSION: Little difference between the study programs analyzed. This is somewhat surprising if one considers the fact that individual conception of each program was based on different local conditions and needs, which indeed justify small differences. The similarity of the programs, on the other hand, reflects the universality of the biochemical sciences and their broad potential of practical applications.

ChemInform Abstract: Modern Charge Density Studies: The Entanglement of Experiment and Theory

AbstractReview: 171 refs.

How DNA Polymerases Catalyze DNA Replication, Repair, and Mutation

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPerspectiveNEXTHow DNA Polymerases Catalyze DNA Replication, Repair, and MutationMing-Daw Tsai*View Author Information Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan, and Institute of Biochemical Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan*E-mail: [email protected]. Phone: +886-2-2785-5696, ext. 1013.Cite this: Biochemistry 2014, 53, 17, 2749–2751Publication Date (Web):April 10, 2014Publication History Received7 April 2014Published online23 April 2014Published inissue 6 May 2014https://doi.org/10.1021/bi500417mCopyright © 2014 American Chemical SocietyRIGHTS & PERMISSIONSArticle Views1381Altmetric-Citations14LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit Read OnlinePDF (175 KB) Get e-AlertsSUBJECTS:Catalysis,Chemical structure,Genetics,Noncovalent interactions,Peptides and proteins Get e-Alerts

A new organisation – the European Society of Biochemical Engineering Sciences (EBES) – has set out its vision for the future, including improving the quality of life in Europe driven by advancements in biochemical engineering sciences

A new organisation – the European Society of Biochemical Engineering Sciences (EBES) – has set out its vision for the future, including improving the quality of life in Europe driven by advancements in biochemical engineering sciences

International Society for Computational Biology Honors David Eisenberg with 2013 Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award

International Society for Computational Biology Honors David Eisenberg with 2013 Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award

Biochemical Engineering Sciences

AbstractCover illustrationSpecial Issue: Biochemical Engineering Sciences. This Special Issue is a collection of the latest research in biochemical engineering science presented at the 9th ESBES Conference in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2012. The cover illustrates the development in biochemical engineering science by showing symbols for several biochemical engineering subdisciplines, such as process engineering, strain and drug design, and material science, linked by covalent bonds in a hypothetical biological molecule.Images: © JarnoM, © Amelie Olivier, © teracreonte, © ermess, © by‐studio, © Sergey Nivens, all from Fotolia.com.

Severe Impact of Hemolysis on Stability of Phenolic Compounds

Eugénie-Raphaëlle Bérubé has obtained a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Université du Québec à Montréal. She previously worked at the St-Lawrence Center of Environment, Canada, conducting biomarker analysis to measure the impact of contaminants on aquatic species. She has been working in the bioanalysis industry for the past 8 years at Algorithme Pharma, a CRO located in Laval, Canada, becoming a scientist in bioanalytical method development for the quantitation of pharmaceuticals in biological fluids. The presence of hemolyzed plasma samples can negatively impact preclinical and clinical sample analysis. During the method development of morphine, post-extracted instability issues were encountered in human hemolyzed plasma when compared with nonhemolyzed plasma (called normal plasma for simplicity). Investigation revealed that the presence of methemoglobin using a high pH reconstitution solution led to degradation of morphine over time. The degradation probably results from radical oxidation of the ionized phenolic group promoted by the presence of methemoglobin. Pseudomorphine, the product of oxidative dimerization of morphine, was observed as one of the degradation products in hemolyzed plasma. This hypothesis was extended to raloxifene, another phenol-containing compound. On the other hand, no instability was detected for drug products bearing a masked phenol group or carboxylic acid functionality. The issue of morphine instability was resolved by using a reconstitution solution at a pH below the pKa of the phenol moiety.

Editorial: ESBES – European Society of Biochemical Engineering Sciences

The latest ESBES special issue on "Biochemical Engineering Sciences" is edited by Prof. Guilherme Ferreira (Chairman, ESBES) and Prof. Alois Jungbauer (co-Editor-in-Chief, Biotechnology Journal). This special issue comprises the latest research in biochemical engineering science presented at the 9(th) ESBES Conference held in Istanbul, Turkey in 2012.

Modern charge density studies: the entanglement of experiment and theory

This tutorial review article is intended to provide a general guidance to a reader interested to learn about the methodologies to obtain accurate electron density mapping in molecules and crystalline solids, from theory or from experiment, and to carry out a sensible interpretation of the results, for chemical, biochemical or materials science applications. The review mainly focuses on X-ray diffraction techniques and refinement of experimental models, in particular multipolar models. Neutron diffraction, which was widely used in the past to fix accurate positions of atoms, is now used for more specific purposes. The review illustrates three principal analyses of the experimental or theoretical electron density, based on quantum chemical, semi-empirical or empirical interpretation schemes, such as the quantum theory of atoms in molecules, the semi-classical evaluation of interaction energies and the Hirshfeld analysis. In particular, it is shown that a simple topological analysis based on a partition of the electron density cannot alone reveal the whole nature of chemical bonding. More information based on the pair density is necessary. A connection between quantum mechanics and observable quantities is given in order to provide the physical grounds to explain the observations and to justify the interpretations.

2012 Winners: Vincent Pasque and Aliaksandra Radzisheuskaya

We are pleased to announce that we have two joint winners of the award for the 2012 JCS prize. Vincent Pasque and Aliaksandra Radzisheuskaya receive the prize for their joint first-author paper entitled ‘Histone variant macroH2A marks embryonic differentiation in vivo and acts as an epigenetic

BiotecVisions 2013, January

BiotecVisions 2013, January

Careers and Research Performance of PhD Program Graduates of Health Sciences in Turkey

1Dokuz Eylul University, Graduate School of Health Sciences, Department of Molecular Medicine, Izmir, Turkey 2Celal Bayar University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Biochemistry, Manisa,Turkey 3National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Biochemical Science Division, Gaithersburg, USA 4Celal Bayar University, School of Health, Manisa, Turkey 5Dokuz Eylul University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Biochemistry Izmir, Turkey

Recent advances in electrodriven enantioseparations

Capillary electromigration techniques have developed into significant analytical separation tools especially for enantioseparations. While CE can be considered a mature technique as documented by its wide applications, CEC is still in a developmental state despite many research efforts. The success of stereospecific CE separation methods is due to the high specificity and flexibility of the technique as well as the availability of many types of chiral selectors. Thus, numerous methods have been developed for the analysis of chiral compounds in chemical, biochemical, pharmaceutical, environmental, and forensic sciences. However, most reported applications deal with pharmaceuticals. The search for new chiral selectors also continued despite the fact that most applications were performed using cyclodextrins. Furthermore, CE has been combined with spectroscopic and molecular modeling studies in attempts to understand the interactions between chiral selectors and analytes. The present review focuses on recent examples of mechanistic aspects of capillary enantioseparations with regard to mathematical modeling of enantioseparations, investigations of the analyte-complex structures as well as new chiral selectors and applications of chiral analyses by CE and CEC. It covers the literature published between January 2011 and August 2012.

Monitoring and control of microbioreactors: An expert opinion on development needs

This perspective article is based on an expert panel review on microbioreactor applications in biochemical and biomedical engineering that was organized by the M³C (measurement, monitoring, modelling and control) Working Group of the European Section of Biochemical Engineering Science (ESBES) in the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB). The aim of the panel was to provide an updated view on the present status of the subject and to identify critical needs and issues for furthering the successful development of microbioreactor monitoring and control. This will benefit future bioprocess development and in vitro toxicity testing. The article concludes with a set of recommendations for extended use and further development of microbioreactors.

Exploring the bibliometric and semantic nature of negative results

Negative results are not popular to disseminate. However, their publication would help to save resources and foster scientific communication. This study analysed the bibliometric and semantic nature of negative results publications. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine (JNRBM) was used as a role model. Its complete articles from 2002---2009 were extracted from SCOPUS and supplemented by related records. Complementary negative results records were retrieved from Web of Science in Biochemistry and Telecommunications. Applied bibliometrics comprised of co-author and co-affiliation analysis and a citation impact profile. Bibliometrics showed that authorship is widely spread. A specific community for the publication of negative results in devoted literature is non-existent. Neither co-author nor co-affiliation analysis indicated strong interconnectivities. JNRBM articles are cited by a broad spectrum of journals rather than by specific titles. Devoted negative results journals like JNRBM have a rather low impact measured by the number of received citations. On the other hand, only one-third of the publications remain uncited, corroborating their importance for the scientific community. The semantic analysis relies on negative expressions manually identified in JNRBM article titles and abstracts and extracted to syntactic patterns. By using a Natural Language Processing tool these patterns are then employed to detect their occurrences in the multidisciplinary bibliographical database PASCAL. The translation of manually identified negation patterns to syntactic patterns and their application to multidisciplinary bibliographic databases (PASCAL, Web of Science) proved to be a successful method to retrieve even hidden negative results. There is proof that negative results are not only restricted to the biomedical domain. Interestingly a high percentage of the so far identified negative results papers were funded and therefore needed to be published. Thus policies that explicitly encourage or even mandate the publication of negative results could probably bring about a shift in the current scientific communication behaviour.

Research Spotlight: Measurement And Validation of Cell-Based Assays With Microfluidics At The National Institute of Standards And Technology

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the National Metrology Institute for the USA. Our mission is to advance measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life in the USA. Due to the increased need for technologies that advance biological research and the many new and exciting innovations in microfluidics, our projects are aimed at engineering well-controlled microenvironments for quantitative measurements of cell behavior in microfluidic systems. Cell-based microfluidics at NIST is a highly multidisciplinary activity and is greatly influenced by NIST programs in biochemical sciences, materials science, engineering and information technology. Although there are many microfluidic-related activities ongoing at NIST, we will focus on projects related to cell-based measurements in this article.