Here are some excerpts from todays breaking news.
Concerns have been promoted over the investigation of potential inhibitory effects of anti-freeze proteins (AFPs) on hydrates. AFPS are a diverse class of proteins, first identified in fish during the 195-‘s and have been found in cold adapted bacteria, plants and insects. Despite differences in structure, the common ability to adsorb ice using specific ice binding facets, AFP lowers the freezing point of water as result of increased local curvature of growing ice around adsorbed proteins, resulting in a difference between freezing and melting points, a phenomenon known as thermal hysteresis (TH).
Previously proposed AFP’s altered hydrate inhibitors. Visual fluoresceinity to UV light can now tag AFP’s and characterize the effects of AFP’s on THF hydrate crystals. The inhibitory effects of AFP’s on gas consumption and growth rates of natural gas hydrate will help develop alternative, bio biological based hydrate inhibitors.
Since fusion proteins adsorb polycrystalline THF hydrates, single hydrate crystals slowly grow at supercool 3°C to observe if the presence of the proteins could change the crystal’s morphology. With no proteins or in the presense of low to moderate concentrations of GFP, crystals exhibit cubic octahedral shapes characteristic of THF hydrates at similar conditions. The planes are defined with no apparent modifications to the crystal shape.
These experiments were all conducted with model tetrahydrofuran (THF) methane clathrate hydrates and thought important to be determined if these recumbent proteins could also show inhibition towards natural gas hydrates. Although fish and insect AFP’s show activity in propane hydrate inhibitors, the green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusions only recently have never been tested using gas mixtures found in high pressure oil and gas pipelines. Conditions in these pipelines may vary, but deep sea pipelines are generally 4°C. These do not present deleterious effects on proteins as the thawed and sewn, inhibition activity is not observed as AFP’s hydration inhibition is determined by amount of gas uptake. Similar to the observations, modest chemical inhibitions showed little activity due to the lack of colligative effects, indicated by non incorporation into the THF hydrate. As a result, the dominant Type II AFP demonstrates a single protein on a THF single hydrate clearly demonstrates a mere 18% decrease in clathrate formation.
Concerns have been promoted over the investigation of potential inhibitory effects of anti-freeze proteins (AFPs) on hydrates. AFPS are a diverse class of proteins, first identified in fish during the 195-‘s and have been found in cold adapted bacteria, plants and insects. Despite differences in structure, the common ability to adsorb ice using specific ice binding facets, AFP lowers the freezing point of water as result of increased local curvature of growing ice around adsorbed proteins, resulting in a difference between freezing and melting points, a phenomenon known as thermal hysteresis (TH).
Previously proposed AFP’s altered hydrate inhibitors. Visual fluoresceinity to UV light can now tag AFP’s and characterize the effects of AFP’s on THF hydrate crystals. The inhibitory effects of AFP’s on gas consumption and growth rates of natural gas hydrate will help develop alternative, bio biological based hydrate inhibitors.
Since fusion proteins adsorb polycrystalline THF hydrates, single hydrate crystals slowly grow at supercool 3°C to observe if the presence of the proteins could change the crystal’s morphology. With no proteins or in the presense of low to moderate concentrations of GFP, crystals exhibit cubic octahedral shapes characteristic of THF hydrates at similar conditions. The planes are defined with no apparent modifications to the crystal shape.
These experiments were all conducted with model tetrahydrofuran (THF) methane clathrate hydrates and thought important to be determined if these recumbent proteins could also show inhibition towards natural gas hydrates. Although fish and insect AFP’s show activity in propane hydrate inhibitors, the green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusions only recently have never been tested using gas mixtures found in high pressure oil and gas pipelines. Conditions in these pipelines may vary, but deep sea pipelines are generally 4°C. These do not present deleterious effects on proteins as the thawed and sewn, inhibition activity is not observed as AFP’s hydration inhibition is determined by amount of gas uptake. Similar to the observations, modest chemical inhibitions showed little activity due to the lack of colligative effects, indicated by non incorporation into the THF hydrate. As a result, the dominant Type II AFP demonstrates a single protein on a THF single hydrate clearly demonstrates a mere 18% decrease in clathrate formation.
2010 Towards a Green Hydrate Inhibitor: Imaging Antifreeze Proteins on Clathrates. PLoS ONE 5(2): e8953. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008953
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