Change in the Oxea management team

The global chemical company Oxea announces changes in leadership: For personal and family reasons, Neil Robertson, member of the management team of the Oxea Group and Managing Director of Oxea GmbH with responsibility for Finance, Accounting and IT, will retire at the end of 2011. This intention had already been communicated by the company last autumn.

To ensure a smooth transition, his successor Bernhard Spetsmann joined Oxea in October 2010 as a new member of the management team of the Oxea Group and as Managing Director of Oxea GmbH. Initially Spetsmann was responsible for Mergers & Acquisitions and strategic projects and has assumed increasing responsibility in the areas of Finance, Accounting and IT. He will assume complete responsibility for these areas from July 1, 2011.

As planned, Robertson will stay with Oxea until the end of the year. During this time his focus will be on strategic projects.

Before joining Oxea, Spetsmann was most recently CFO of Autobahn Tank & Rast GmbH. Prior to that he held several senior management positions at Schmalbach-Lubeca AG. Among others Spetsmann was CFO of the White Cap Division for Europe and Asia, and Head of Mergers & Acquisitions.

 

Chemist solves riddle of killer diseases

Anthrax, septicemia and meningitis are some of the planet's most deadly infections. In part because doctors lack basic insights to prevent and cure diseases caused by so called Gram-positive bacteria. Now, a chemist from the University of Copenhagen has revealed the mechanism behind these deadly infections.

By creating a synthetic version of a Gram-positive bacterial endotoxin, Danish synthetic chemist Christian Marcus Pedersen has made a contribution that'll compel immune biologists to revise their textbooks. More importantly, he has paved the first steps of the way towards new and effective types of antibiotics.

Chemist in international collaboration with biologists and physicians

The research results were attained in collaboration with Prof. Richard R. Schmidt of the University of Konstanz and biologists at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Medizin und Biowissenschaften in Borstel, Germany. Ulrich Zähringer, leader of the Center in Borstel, is thrilled with Pedersen's achievement.

"No one knew what substance Gram-positive bacteria released to make us sick. But because Pedersen can supply us with substances that are entirely pure, and have a known structure and composition, we are able to get a more precise answer as to why we show symptoms when these bacteria enter our body," explains Professor Zähringer.

Synthesis succeeds where biologists gave up

Lipoteichoic acid, is a substance created and present in the cell wall of Gram positive bacteria. It appears to be the culprit of stimulating immune response symptoms such as fever, inflammation and organ failure. Indeed, when exploring illness, it is critical to investigate the substances that bind themselves to healthy human cells and thus, the cell wall becomes an important place to look. But if the substance breaks down as soon as it comes under the microscope, the chances of studying its binding abilities are not very great. Therefore, it was a major breakthrough when Pedersen was able to fabricate the molecule from scratch.

"Biologists have been trying to isolate this poison from living organisms for years. But the substance has a number of active groups. That is to say, the spiked parts of the molecule which enable the entire molecule to bind to cells. This makes it extremely difficult to purify. And dirty molecules are not conducive to viable research. Therefore, it's a great advantage to fabricate the substance synthetically, because we can "build" a molecule in which everything is included... Or where we ourselves decide which part of the structure to leave out," says Christian Marcus Pedersen.

Tiresome task but outstanding results

Lipoteichoic acid consists of 335 atoms combined in tangle, the complexity of which has made it difficult to collect. To create pure and intact molecules, Pedersen needed to complete 88 so-called synthesis steps. That is to say that 88 distinct "recipes", all of which needed to function, were required in order to reach the final result. These synthetic biomolecules are a fantastic tool for biologists in the investigation of Gram-positive bacteria's attack mechanisms.

"When it comes to these bacteria, there is still no one who knows precisely what on the bacteria activates the immune system. But we can build the precise parts of the structure that we want to. And biologists can examine how what we have built reacts with the immune system," says Pedersen.

Provided by University of Copenhagen

2010 much better year for container glass production

06-30-2011: Production data 2010 published from the European Container Glass Federation (FEVE)  show a general recovery from the drop of the previous year. In 2010, the European industry produced 20.7 million tonnes of glass compared to 20.1 million tonnes in 2009 marking an increase of 3.5%.

The biggest increase in production was recorded in Turkey (27%) and United Kingdom (9.5%). In Italy (5.2%), Poland (5.7%) the increase was more important than in Portugal (1.9%), Spain (2.7%) and North & Central countries (1.7%). In Germany the situation was stable (0.2%) as well as in France where a slight decrease was recorded (-0.1%).

“The industry was able to react firmly to the impact of the previous year’s financial crisis – says FEVE President Niall Wall – and to maintain its place as a key player in the packaging market notwithstanding the harsh competition. This is important if we are to offer consumers choice because glass is their preferred packaging thanks to its environmental, health and taste preservation qualities.  For some natural and healthy products like milk, yoghurts, baby food or mineral waters, consumer demand for glass packaging is not being met because of the lack of choice on supermarket shelves”.

The industry continues to make efforts to improve the efficiency of manufacturing process, to reduce environmental impacts and to reduce costs to ensure that brands are provided with a premium packaging solution at competitive prices when compared to other materials.

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Iowa State hybrid lab combines technologies to make biorenewable fuels and products

Laura Jarboe pointed to a collection of test tubes in her Iowa State University laboratory.

Some of the tubes looked like they were holding very weak coffee. That meant microorganisms – in this case, Shewanella bacteria – were growing and biochemically converting sugars into hydrocarbons, said Jarboe, an Iowa State assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering.

Some of the sugars in those test tubes were produced by the fast pyrolysis of biomass. That's a thermochemical process that quickly heats biomass (such as corn stalks and leaves) in the absence of oxygen to produce a liquid product known as bio-oil and a solid product called biochar. The bio-oil can be used to manufacture fuels and chemicals; the biochar can be used to enrich soil and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Iowa State's Hybrid Processing Laboratory on the first floor of the new, state-built Biorenewables Research Laboratory is all about encouraging that unique mix of biochemical and thermochemical technologies. The goal is for biologists and engineers to use the lab's incubators, reactors, gas chromatography instruments and anaerobic chambers to find new and better ways to produce biorenewable fuels and chemicals.

"Biological processes occur well below the boiling point of water, while thermal processes are usually performed hundreds of degrees higher, which makes it hard to imagine how these processes can be combined," said Robert C. Brown, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, the Gary and Donna Hoover Chair in Mechanical Engineering, and the Iowa Farm Bureau Director of Iowa State's Bioeconomy Institute.

"In fact, these differences in operating regimes represent one of the major advantages of hybrid processing," Brown said. "High temperatures readily break down biomass to substrates that can be fermented to desirable products."

Jarboe's research is one example. She's trying to develop bacteria that can grow and thrive in the chemicals and compounds that make up bio-oil. That way, they can ferment the sugars from bio-oil with greater efficiency and produce more biorenewable fuels or chemicals.

Another example of mixing the biochemical with the thermochemical is the work of Zhiyou Wen, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition, and Yanwen Shen, a doctoral student in his research group.

They're working to break down a bottleneck in the fermentation of synthesis gas – a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen that's produced by the partial combustion of biomass in a gasifier. The fermentation process slows when researchers dissolve the gas into a liquid that can be used by microorganisms to produce biofuels. They're looking for bioreactor technologies that boost the mass transfer of the synthesis gas without adding energy costs.

A third example is the work of DongWon Choi, a former doctoral student and post-doctoral research associate at Iowa State who's now an assistant professor of biological and environmental sciences at Texas A&M University Commerce. He continues to collaborate in the hybrid lab by working with microalgae that convert carbon dioxide into oil that can be used to produce biofuels.

That oil is currently harvested with solvents or mechanical presses. Both processes produce a lot of waste and the resulting waste management problems. Choi is using pyrolysis technology to heat the algae and convert it into jet and diesel fuels without the waste.

And the researchers say the hybrid lab's mix of people, technologies, equipment and ideas is beginning to show results.

"The hybrid lab provides enormous opportunities for performing biological-based processes for producing biofuel from thermochemically treated biomass," Wen said.

Yes, said Jarboe, "I think it is working well. This is a long process, but we're writing research proposals and papers. Everybody loves the idea of this hybrid approach. It has such a promising future; the challenge is in the collaboration."

The hybrid lab is starting to make the collaboration easier, though.

Brown said he's noticed the students who work in the hybrid lab seem to be comfortable crossing thermochemical and biochemical lines: "Just like children from different cultures often learn to communicate with one another more quickly than do their parents, graduate students seem to pick up cross disciplinary culture and language faster than their faculty advisers."

Provided by Iowa State University (news : web)

Click chemistry creates new 'stealth' DNA links

Scientists at the University of Southampton have pioneered a chemical method of linking DNA strands that is tolerated by living organisms.

The researchers have developed an artificial DNA "stealth" linkage using click chemistry, a highly-efficient chemical reaction, to join together DNA strands without disrupting the genetic code.

The breakthrough, published online in the journal PNAS this week (27 June), means long sections of DNA can be created quickly and efficiently by chemical methods.

DNA strands are widely used in biological and medical research, and clean and effective methods of making longer sections are of great value. Current techniques rely on the use of enzymes as biological catalysts. Joining DNA chemically is particularly interesting as it does not depend on enzymes so can be carried out on a large scale under a variety of conditions.

Co-author of the paper Tom Brown, Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Southampton, says: "We believe this is the first example of a chemical method of joining together longer strands of DNA that works well.

"Typically, synthesised DNA strands will be up to 150 bases; beyond that they are very difficult to make. We have doubled that to 300 and we can go further. We can also join together heavily modified DNA strands, used in medical research for example, which normal enzymes might not want to couple together."

The Southampton team investigated whether the artificial links would be tolerated biologically within the bacteria E.coli.

"The genetic code could still be correctly read," says co-investigator Dr Ali Tavassoli.

"The artificial linkages act in stealth as they go undetected by the organism; the gene was functional despite containing 'scars' in its backbone. This opens up all sorts of possibilities."

The team is now hoping to secure funding to explore potential applications of the technology.

More information: The paper "Biocompatible artificial DNA linker that is read through by DNA polymerases and is functional in Escherichia coli" by Afaf H. El-Sagheer, A. Pia Sanzone, Rachel Gao, Ali Tavassoli and Tom Brown, of the University of Southampton, is published online by PNAS, 27 June 2011.

Provided by University of Southampton (news : web)