Transfer of 90Sr to rice plants after its acute deposition onto flooded paddy soils.

The transfer of 90Sr to rice plants following its acute ground deposition was examined experimentally in a greenhouse. Lysimeters were flooded after being filled with the soil monoliths from 12 paddy fields. A solution of 90Sr was applied to the standing water in the flooded lysimeters at the pre-transplanting stage or booting stage. Applied 90Sr was mixed with the topsoil only after the pre-transplanting application (PTA). The transfer was quantified with the areal transfer factor (TF(a), m2 kg(-1)-dry) defined as the ratio of the plant concentration to the initial ground deposition. In the PTA, the first-year TF(a) values in the 12 soils were in the range of 8.2 x 10(-3) -2.1 x 10(-2) and 1.7 x 10(-4) -3.6 x 10(-4) for the straws and hulled seeds, respectively. The TF(a) values from the booting-stage application (BSA) were higher than those from the PTA by a factor of up to four. The ratios of the seed TF(a) to the straw TF(a) were, on the whole, higher in the BSA. The 90Sr TF(a) in the PTA was negatively correlated with the soil pH and, to a lesser degree, the exchangeable Ca content. In the second year, the TF(a) in the PTA reduced to 53-90% of that in the first year. A more significant reduction, in general, occurred in a sandier soil. Based on the four consecutive years' transfer data, an overall half-time of the 90Sr TF(a) was estimated to be 2.2 years.

Spontaneous liberation of intracellular polyhydroxybutyrate granules in Escherichia coli.

Despite receiving much attention as a biodegradable substitute for conventional non-biodegradable plastics, the commercial use of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) remains limited because of its high production cost. In order to reduce the recovery/purification cost, which forms over half of the total production cost, we have developed a new cultivation method which enables spontaneous liberation of PHB by modulation of the initial inoculum size and the medium composition in recombinant Escherichia coli harboring Alcaligenes eutrophus phbCAB genes. In flask cultivation using a low cell inoculum and 2x LB medium containing 21% glucose, autolysis of 80.2% as well as yields of 85.2 g/l of PHB and a PHB content of 99.0% (w/w) were obtained. The glucose conversion rate was 0.43. The strategies developed in this study can minimize complex and unfavorable efforts required for efficient recovery/purification processes, thereby enabling biodegradable plastic to be produced by the recombinant E. coli so as to compete with conventional non-biodegradable plastic.