RESUMEN
Organic compounds are employed as additives to increase the dissolution speed of gold, in concentrations around 1 g/L when using cyanidation, thereby forming a residual aqueous effluent with high amounts of free cyanides and organic compounds, which generate metallic complexes difficult to degrade. To increase the photodegradation efficiency, promising niobium and titanium porous materials are proposed as photocatalysts, due to their role in simultaneous oxidation and reduction reactions. In the process of cyanide oxidation, NbO5 0.3H2O was doped with titanium oxalate (IV) of 0.5, 1, and 1.5%; and HTiNbO5 were synthesized, from the mixture of NbO5 with TiO2 Degussa-P25, by coprecipitation, impregnation, and solid state. The determination of its elemental composition, morphological and textural properties were carried out by using various XRD techniques, Raman spectroscopy, SEM/EDS and acidity by pyridine. The experiments of photocatalytic oxidation of cyanide used one semibatch reactor with ultraviolet irradiation 125 W in a pH range of 9.5-12. The catalyst with the highest percentage of degradation was HTiNbO5 93.7%, which is attributed to the microstructure of the double layer and Lewis acidity sites, followed by NbTi-1% 92.9% and the Nb2O5.3H2O 82.4%, being the majority product cyanate, proposing its mechanism of reaction. Characterization experiments indicated Nb-O-Ti bridges that have been associated with the control of redox properties of the niobium species and Ti-O-Nb = O, which could be generating a greater number of e-H +pairs, increasing the photocatalytic activity. It is considered that the method of synthesis has a strong influence in changing the morphology of the particles such as porosity, specific surface and factors such as the acidity of niobium-based catalysts, which are important to achieving efficiency in degradation. Niobium-Titanium photocatalysts proved to be an excellent new breakthrough in Advanced Oxidation Technologies (AOT), to eliminate cyanide in wastewater from mining activities.
RESUMEN
The levels of organic pollutants, such as optical brightener (OB) compounds, in the global environment have been increasing in recent years. The toxicological effects and signal transduction systems associated with OB toxicity have not been thoroughly studied. The ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) plays a crucial role in regulating multiple essential cellular processes, and proteasome-associated cysteine deubiquitinases (DUBs), ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L5 (UCHL5) and USP14, are two major regulators for (de)ubiquitination and stability of many important target proteins. Therefore, potential inhibition of UCHL5 and USP14 activities by some environmental chemicals might cause in vivo toxicity. In the current study we hypothesize that electrophilic OB compounds, such as 4,4'-diamino-2,2'-stilbenedisulfonic acid(DAST), fluorescent brightener 28 (FB-28) and FB-71, can interact with the catalytic triads (CYS, HIS, and ASP) of UCHL5 and USP14 and inhibit their enzymatic activities, leading to cell growth suppression. This hypothesis is supported by our findings presented in this study. Results from in silico computational docking and ubiquitin vinyl sulfone assay confirmed the UCHL5/USP14-inhibitory activities of these OB compounds that have potencies in an order of: FB-71 > FB-28 > DAST. Furthermore, inhibition of these two proteasomal DUBs by OBs resulted in cell growth inhibition and apoptosis induction in two human breast cancer cell models. In addition, we found that OB-mediated DUB inhibition triggers a feedback reaction in which expression of UCHL5 and USP14 proteins is increased to compromise the suppressed activities. Our study suggests that these commonly used OB compounds may target and inhibit proteasomal cysteine DUBs, which should contribute to their toxicological effects in vivo.