[en] Highlights: • 39 SWEET genes from two pineapple cultivars were identified and systematic analysis. • SWEET genes duplication events and good collinearity relationships. • Expression profiles of SWEET genes in developing fruit were analyzed. • SWEET genes likely related to pineapple fruit sugar accumulation and allocation. Sugars will eventually be exported transporters (SWEETs) are a group of recently identified sugar transporters in plants that play important roles in diverse physiological processes. However, currently, limited information about this gene family is available in pineapple (Ananas comosus). The availability of the recently released pineapple genome sequence provides the opportunity to identify SWEET genes in a Bromeliaceae family member at the genome level. In this study, 39 pineapple SWEET genes were identified in two pineapple cultivars (18 AnfSWEET and 21 AnmSWEET) and further phylogenetically classified into five clades. A phylogenetic analysis revealed distinct evolutionary paths for the SWEET genes of the two pineapple cultivars. The MD2 cultivar might have experienced a different expansion than the F153 cultivar because two additional duplications exist, which separately gave rise to clades III and IV. A gene exon/intron structure analysis showed that the pineapple SWEET genes contained highly conserved exon/intron numbers. An analysis of public RNA-seq data and expression profiling showed that SWEET genes may be involved in fruit development and ripening processes. AnmSWEET5 and AnmSWEET11 were highly expressed in the early stages of pineapple fruit development and then decreased. The study increases the understanding of the roles of SWEET genes in pineapple.

[en] Hot water extract of sugar and red maple bark was addedto maple syrup and dried byfreeze (FD) and vacuum drum drying(VD) techniques. Addition of maple bark extracts to syrup helped to develop polyphenols-enriched maple sugar. X-ray diffraction revealed that sugar obtained from FD was amorphous in nature, while crystalline when dried by VD. Furthermore, the observation of maple sugar samples under scanning electron microscopy showed smooth and porous surface for FD sugar, while rough and grainy surface for VD sugar. Hausner ratio indicated that sugar produced by VD showed better flow characteristics than FD sugar. (Author)

[en] Highlights: • Shifting from fossil resources to sustainable biomass for chemicals production is important in both academic and our society. • A comprehensive review about the catalytic conversion of biomass into HMF and DMF have been presented. • Catalysts, and reaction systems for the production of HMF and DMF developed in the last few years are discussed. • The scale-up conversion of biomass and the process economy analysis of HMF and DMF production are also discussed. -- Abstract: With the growing shortage of fossil energy and the increasing of concerns over global climate changes and environmental problems have driven the development of alternative energy sources. Recently, great interest has been oriented towards the development of sustainable resources, especially the utilization of lignocellulosic biomass, a renewable and the most abundant source of biomass originating from plant photosynthesis in nature. Catalytic conversion of renewable cellulosic biomass can produce a series of compounds such as 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF) which are important platform compounds and ideal renewable alternative to fossil fuels. To obtain the renowned bio-based platform molecules, various catalysts and reaction systems have been used in the past decade years. To fully understand current biomass to HMF and DMF development, it is necessary to have an overview and comparison of different homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. The reaction systems also exhibit a remarkable impact on the yield and distribution of products with different catalysts. General trends and future research directions of using biomass for HMF, DMF production are also discussed systematically.

[en] Although crystalline cane and beet sucrose are > 99.8% pure, they exhibit different thermal behavior. In general, the cane sucrose DSC curve contains a small endothermic peak before the main endothermic peak, which is not present in the beet DSC curve, leading to a lower onset temperature for thermal decomposition in cane. To compare their thermal behavior, the thermal decomposition kinetic parameters for analytical and commercial cane sucrose and commercial beet sucrose were determined. Beet sucrose had a higher activation energy than either cane source, indicating that thermal decomposition is inhibited in beet sucrose. However, the k values from isothermal experiments at a single temperature did not match the nonisothermally predicted k values, suggesting that, while useful for comparison, the nonisothermal kinetic parameters cannot be used to predict the behavior of sucrose thermal decomposition under isothermal conditions.

[en] Highlights: • A new process for metal-ion interactions on surfaces. • A new process for enhancing interactions with sugars. • A new process for using flakes for catalysis. • A new process for using flakes for sugar interactions. • A new process for formation of sugars on metal induced surfaces. The present theoretical study proposes the enhanced interaction of nanostructures with monosaccharides. It has been demonstrated that the interactions with and without metal adsorption do in fact show that the adsorption energies change accordingly. It is important to note that the chemistry of reactions can also be influenced as a result of this change in dynamics.

[en] Honey is a medication material and its very expensive, so some people try to cheat honey by adding sugar solution to it. In this work, a method was done to investigate the ratio of cheat or sugar solution in honey. UV-spectroscopy was done for original honey. UV-spectroscopy for several mixtures containing different ratios for honey and sugar solution was done to make normalization curve. Different types of honey were collected from Iraqi market and UV-spectroscopy was done for these types. For every graph done for these honey types collected from Iraqi market, maximum absorbance point was taken and applied on the normalization curve. After application on the normalization curve, the ratios of honey and sugar solution were found for every type of honey collected. (paper)

[en] The utilization of oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) fibre on bio-composite product has been introduced to replace current material mainly wood fibre. OPEFB is widely available as palm oil is one of the major agricultural crops in Malaysia. EFB fibre are lignocellulosic materials that could replace other natural fibre product especially cement bonded board. However, the contains of residual oil and sugar in EFB fibre has been detected to be the reason for incompatibility issue between EFB fibre and cement mixtures. Regarding on the issue, a study has been conducted widely on finding the suitable pre-treatment method for EFB fibre to remove carbohydrate contained in the said fibre that are known to inhibit cement hydration. Aside from that, cement accelerator was introduced to enhance the hydration of cement when it was mixed with natural fibre. Hence, this paper will summaries the previous findings and in-depth study on the use of EFB fibre as a replacement material in cement bonded fibre boards. (paper)

[en] The wide use of portable electronics urgently requires better batteries featuring high energy density, good safety, and biodegradability. Although sugar-powered enzymatic fuel cells (EFCs) could be next-generation, environmentally friendly, micropower sources, they suffer from incomplete oxidation of the sugar fuels and an inability to utilize mixed sugars, which causes the low efficiency of fuel utilization and limits the choice of fuels. In this study, we designed an in vitro 15-enzyme pathway that can co-utilize sucrose, glucose, and fructose in the anodic compartment of EFCs. The EFCs achieved Faraday efficiencies of approximately 95% for these three sugars, suggesting that the fuels were completely oxidized, and yielded a maximum power density of 0.80–1.08 mW cm⁻². In addition, EFCs based on this versatile enzymatic pathway were capable of running on mixed sugars, such as commercial soft drinks. These results offer a possible solution for the extraction of the maximum energy stored in mixed sugar fuels and the achievement of high energy densities for EFCs; these EFCs offer good substrate flexibility and commercial potential.

[en] The specifications of a dosimeter, using sugar as material are presented. This dosimeter will be used to measure radiation dose in contaminated persons. (E.G.)

[en] Highlights: • Expressing pglB from the genome creates a “plug and play” E. coli strain for homogeneous recombinant glycoprotein production. • This engineered strain can increase glycosylation efficiency and overall glycoprotein titres. • Parallel Reaction Monitoring can simultaneously confirm glycan addition and quantify absolute glycoprotein titres. Although Escherichia coli has been engineered to perform N-glycosylation of recombinant proteins, an optimal glycosylating strain has not been created. By inserting a codon optimised Campylobacter oligosaccharyltransferase onto the E. coli chromosome, we created a glycoprotein platform strain, where the target glycoprotein, sugar synthesis and glycosyltransferase enzymes, can be inserted using expression vectors to produce the desired homogenous glycoform. To assess the functionality and glycoprotein producing capacity of the chromosomally based OST, a combined Western blot and parallel reaction monitoring mass spectrometry approach was applied, with absolute quantification of glycoprotein. We demonstrated that chromosomal oligosaccharyltransferase remained functional and facilitated N-glycosylation. Although the engineered strain produced less total recombinant protein, the glycosylation efficiency increased by 85%, and total glycoprotein production was enhanced by 17%.