Enhanced Solubilization of Bovine Serum Albumin in Reverse Micelles by Compressed CO2

Walnut Protein: A Rising Source of High-Quality Protein and Its Updated Comprehensive Review

Recently, plant protein as a necessary nutrient source for human beings, a common ingredient of traditional processed food, and an important element of new functional food has gained prominence due to the increasing demand for healthy food. Walnut protein (WP) is obtained from walnut kernels and walnut oil-pressing waste and has better nutritional, functional, and essential amino acids in comparison with other vegetable and grain proteins. WP can be conveniently obtained by various extraction techniques, including alkali-soluble acid precipitation, salting-out, and ultrasonic-assisted extraction, among others. The functional properties of WP can be modified for desired purposes by using some novel methods, including free radical oxidation, enzymatic modification, high hydrostatic pressure, etc. Moreover, walnut peptides play an important biological role both in vitro and in vivo. The main activities of the walnut peptides are antihypertensive, antioxidant, learning improvement, and anticancer, among others. Furthermore, WP could be applied in the development of functional foods or dietary supplements, such as delivery systems and food additives, among others. This review summarizes recent knowledge on the nutritional, functional, and bioactive peptide aspects of WP and possible future products, providing a theoretical reference for the utilization and development of oil crop waste.

Supercritical or compressed CO2 as a stimulus for tuning surfactant aggregations

Surfactant assemblies have a wide range of applications in areas such as the chemical industry, material science, biology, and enhanced oil recovery. From both theoretical and practical perspectives, researchers have focused on tuning the aggregation behaviors of surfactants. Researchers commonly use solid and liquid compounds such as cosurfactants, acids, salts, and alcohols as stimuli for tuning the aggregation behaviors. However, these additives can present economic and environmental costs and can contaminate or modify the product. Therefore researchers would like to develop effective methods for tuning surfactant aggregation with easily removable, economical, and environmentally benign stimuli. Supercritical or compressed CO(2) is abundant, nontoxic, and nonflammable and can be recycled easily after use. Compressed CO(2) is quite soluble in many liquids, and the solubility depends on pressure and temperature. Therefore researchers can continuously influence the properties of liquid solvents by controlling the pressure or temperature of CO(2). In this Account, we briefly review our recent studies on tuning the aggregation behaviors of surfactants in different media using supercritical or compressed CO(2). Supercritical or compressed CO(2) serves as a versatile regulator of a variety of properties of surfactant assemblies. Using CO(2), we can switch the micellization of surfactants in water, adjust the properties of reverse micelles, enhance the stability of vesicles, and modify the switching transition between different surfactant assemblies. We can also tune the properties of emulsions, induce the formation of nanoemulsions, and construct novel microemulsions. With these CO(2)-responsive surfactant assemblies, we have synthesized functional materials, optimized chemical reaction conditions, and enhanced extraction and separation efficiencies. Compared with the conventional solid or liquid additives, CO(2) shows some obvious advantages as an agent for modifying surfactant aggregation. We can adjust the aggregation behaviors continuously by pressure and can easily remove CO(2) without contaminating the product, and the method is environmentally benign. We can explain the mechanisms for these effects on surfactant aggregation in terms of molecular interactions. These studies expand the areas of colloid and interface science, supercritical fluid science and technology, and chemical thermodynamics. We hope that the work will influence other fundamental and applied research in these areas.

Effect of compressed CO2 on the properties of lecithin reverse micelles

Lecithin is a very useful biosurfactant. In this work, the effects of compressed CO 2 on the critical micelle concentration (cmc) of lecithin in cyclohexane and solubilization of water, lysozyme, and PdCl 2 in the lecithin reverse micelles were studied. The micropolarity and pH value of the polar cores of the reverse micelles with and without CO 2 were also investigated. It was found that CO 2 could reduce the cmc of the micellar solution and enhance the capacity of the reverse micelles to solubilize water, the biomolecule, and the inorganic salt significantly. Moreover, the water pools could not be formed in the reverse micelles in the absence of CO 2 because of the limited amount of water solubilized. However, the water pools could be formed in the presence of CO 2 because large amounts of water could be solubilized. All of these provide more opportunity for effective utilization of this green surfactant. The possible mechanism for tuning the properties of the reverse micelles by CO 2 is discussed.

Synthesis of alpha-chymotrypsin/polymer composites by a reverse micelle/gas antisolvent method

Alpha-chymotrypsin (CT)/polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) composites was synthesized by combination of reverse micelles and CO(2). In this method, the two reverse micellar solutions containing CT and PVP, respectively, were first mixed, then compressed CO(2) was used as an antisolvent to precipitate the CT and PVP simultaneously and CT/PVP composites were successfully prepared. The morphology of the obtained CT/PVP composites was characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The FTIR spectra of the composites showed that there was interaction between CT and PVP. The storage activity of the enzyme immobilized on the polymer by this method was higher than that of the pure enzyme. This method has some advantages and can be easily applied to the synthesis of some other enzyme/polymer composites.