| 1. |
- Brodkorb, A., et al.
(författare)
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INFOGEST static in vitro simulation of gastrointestinal food digestion
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Protocols. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1754-2189 .- 1750-2799. ; 14:4, s. 991-1014
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Developing a mechanistic understanding of the impact of food structure and composition on human health has increasingly involved simulating digestion in the upper gastrointestinal tract. These simulations have used a wide range of different conditions that often have very little physiological relevance, and this impedes the meaningful comparison of results. The standardized protocol presented here is based on an international consensus developed by the COST INFOGEST network. The method is designed to be used with standard laboratory equipment and requires limited experience to encourage a wide range of researchers to adopt it. It is a static digestion method that uses constant ratios of meal to digestive fluids and a constant pH for each step of digestion. This makes the method simple to use but not suitable for simulating digestion kinetics. Using this method, food samples are subjected to sequential oral, gastric and intestinal digestion while parameters such as electrolytes, enzymes, bile, dilution, pH and time of digestion are based on available physiological data. This amended and improved digestion method (INFOGEST 2.0) avoids challenges associated with the original method, such as the inclusion of the oral phase and the use of gastric lipase. The method can be used to assess the endpoints resulting from digestion of foods by analyzing the digestion products (e.g., peptides/amino acids, fatty acids, simple sugars) and evaluating the release of micronutrients from the food matrix. The whole protocol can be completed in ~7 d, including ~5 d required for the determination of enzyme activities.
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| 2. |
- Chernev, Petko, et al.
(författare)
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Light-driven formation of manganese oxide by today's photosystem II supports evolutionarily ancient manganese-oxidizing photosynthesis
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Nature. - 2041-1723. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Water oxidation and concomitant dioxygen formation by the manganese-calcium cluster of oxygenic photosynthesis has shaped the biosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere. It has been hypothesized that at an early stage of evolution, before photosynthetic water oxidation became prominent, light-driven formation of manganese oxides from dissolved Mn(2+) ions may have played a key role in bioenergetics and possibly facilitated early geological manganese deposits. Here we report the biochemical evidence for the ability of photosystems to form extended manganese oxide particles. The photochemical redox processes in spinach photosystem-II particles devoid of the manganese-calcium cluster are tracked by visible-light and X-ray spectroscopy. Oxidation of dissolved manganese ions results in high-valent Mn(III, IV)-oxide nanoparticles of the birnessite type bound to photosystem II, with 50-100 manganese ions per photosystem. Having shown that even today's photosystem II can form birnessite-type oxide particles efficiently, we propose an evolutionary scenario, which involves manganese-oxide production by ancestral photosystems, later followed by downsizing of protein-bound manganese-oxide nanoparticles to finally yield today's catalyst of photosynthetic water oxidation.
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| 3. |
- Godinho, José Ricardo Assunção, 1983-
(författare)
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A surface approach to understanding the dissolution of fluorite type materials : Implications for mineral dissolution kinetic models
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Traditional dissolution models are based in the analyses of bulk solution compositions and ignore the fact that different sites of a surface dissolve at different rates. Consequently, the variation of surface area and surface reactivity during dissolution are not considered for the calculation of the overall dissolution rate, which is expected to remain constant with time. The results presented here show the limitations of this approach suggesting that dissolution rates should be calculated as a function of an overall surface reactivity term that accounts for the reactivity of each of the sites that constitute the surface. In contrast to previous studies, here the focus is put on studying the surface at different dissolution times. Significant changes in surface topography of CaF2 were observed during the initial seconds and up to 3200 hours of dissolution. The observed changes include the increase of surface area and progressive exposure of the most stable planes, with consequent decrease in overall reactivity of the surface. The novelty of a proposed dissolution model for fluorite surfaces, when compared with traditional dissolution models, is that it differentiates the reactivity of each characteristic site on a surface, e.g. plane or step edge, and considers the time dynamics. The time dependency of dissolution rates is a major factor of uncertainty when calculating long term dissolution rates using equations derived from dissolution experiments running for short periods of time and using materials with different surface properties. An additional factor of uncertainty is that the initial dissolution times are the most dynamic periods of dissolution, when significant variations of surface area and reactivity occur. The results are expected to have impact in the field of nuclear waste management and to the larger geological and material science community.
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