Promoting Effect of Sodium Chloride on the Solubilization and Depolymerization of Cellulose from Raw Biomass Materials in Water.

The development of a green system to solubilize cellulose from raw biomass is important, yet it is challenging because of the insolubility of cellulose in most solvents. Herein, a green NaCl-H2 O system is developed in which NaCl significantly enhances the dissolution and depolymerisation of cellulose from raw biomass. Nearly all the cellulose in the selected biomass types was dissolved and degraded into oligomers with molecular weights of 200-400 Da under relatively mild conditions. Cl(-) could interact strongly with the end OH group of the glucose unit in a 1:1 ratio, which resulted in the enhanced breaking of both inter- and intramolecular hydrogen bonds. In particular, the intermolecular hydrogen bond with an FTIR band at approximately v=3200 cm(-1) was disrupted significantly by Cl(-) . The FTIR band for a hydrogen bond between hemicellulose and lignin might appear at v=1636 cm(-1) , whereas this bond could be almost totally broken under hydrothermal conditions at 220 °C.

Safety assessment for genetically modified sweet pepper and tomato.

The coat protein (CP) gene of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) was cloned from a Chinese CMV isolate, the CaMV promoter and NOS terminator added and the gene construct was transformed into both sweet pepper and tomato plants to confer resistance to CMV. Safety assessments of these genetically modified (GM) plants were conducted. It was found that these two GM products showed no genotoxicity either in vitro or in vivo by the micronucleus test, sperm aberration test and Ames test. Animal feeding studies showed no significant differences in growth, body weight gain, food consumption, hematology, blood biochemical indices, organ weights and histopathology between rats or mice of either sex fed with either GM sweet pepper or tomato diets compared with those with non-GM diets. These results demonstrate that the CMV-resistant sweet pepper and tomato are comparable to the non-GM counterparts in terms of food safety.