A comparison of the sensory and rheological properties of molecular and particulate forms of xanthan gum.

A particulate form of xanthan gum was prepared by extrusion cooking. The temperature dependence of the viscosity of this form shows similarities to starch with an increase in viscosity to a maximum with increasing temperature as a result of the swelling of the particles. The rheology and mixing behaviour with water of the particulate and conventional molecular forms of xanthan were compared with a modified starch. The particulate xanthan products mixed rapidly with water in a similar way to ungelatinised starch, whereas conventional molecular xanthan systems mixed poorly. Using an experienced sensory panel, model tomato products thickened with the three systems were compared at equal shear viscosities. The panel could not discriminate between the tomato flavour of the three products, but found that the xanthan products were perceived as being significantly thicker. These observations were consistent with previous work. Salt perception for both xanthan products was poorer than for the starch thickened systems. A hypothesis to explain why xanthan does not fit into the previously postulated link between mixing and perception is presented.

Shear rheology and filament stretching behaviour of xanthan gum and carboxymethyl cellulose solution in presence of saliva.

The objective of the work reported in this paper is to determine if saliva addition has an effect on the rheology of xanthan gum solutions. The reasons for the interest was that it has been previously reported that flavour release from high viscosity xanthan thickened foods is not reduced in the same way as foods thickened by other hydrocolloids at comparable viscosities. It was previously postulated that this could be due to an interaction between saliva and xanthan that could change the microstructure and rheology of xanthan solutions. In this work the effect of saliva on the rheology of CMC and xanthan solutions was compared. Solutions of molecularly dissolved xanthan gum and CMC mixed with water or human whole saliva at a ratio of 5:1 showed little impact of the presence of saliva on steady shear or dynamic viscosity for the two hydrocolloids. In filament thinning experiments saliva addition significantly increased filament break-up time for xanthan gum while it had little effect on the break-up time of the CMC filament. Also, filament thinning appeared a lot less even and was not as reproducible in the case of xanthan gum. Addition of CMC and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) to xanthan gum solutions showed a similar increase in break-up time to saliva, but to see this effect the viscosity of the added CMC or HPMC solution had to be very much higher than the viscosity of saliva. The results are discussed in the context of the structure of xanthan gum and the reported extensional rheology of saliva.

Construction and evaluation of multisite recombinatorial (Gateway) cloning vectors for Gram-positive bacteria.

BACKGROUND: The Gateway recombinatorial cloning system allows easy and rapid joining of DNA fragments. Here we report the construction and evaluation of three different Gram-positive vectors that can be used with the Multisite Gateway cloning system to rapidly produce new gene arrangements in plasmid constructs for use in a variety of Gram-positive bacteria. RESULTS: Comparison of patterns of reporter gene expression with conventionally constructed clones show that the presence of residual recombination (att) sites does not have an effect on patterns of gene expression, although overall levels of gene expression may vary. Rapid construction of these new vectors allowed vector/gene combinations to be optimized following evaluation of plasmid constructs in different bacterial cells and demonstrates the benefits of plasmid construction using Gateway cloning. CONCLUSION: The residual att sites present after Gateway cloning did not affect patterns of promoter induction in Gram-positive bacteria and there was no evidence of differences in mRNA stability of transcripts. However overall levels of gene expression may be reduced, possibly due to some post-transcriptional event. The new vectors described here allow faster, more efficient cloning in range of Gram-positive bacteria.

Null mutants of individual RABA genes impact the proportion of different cell wall components in stem tissue of Arabidopsis thaliana.

In Arabidopsis, and other plants, the RABA GTPases (orthologous to the Rab11a of mammals) have expanded in number and diversity and have been shown to belong to eight sub clades, some of which have been implicated in controlling vesicles that traffic cell wall polymers and enzymes that synthesise or modify them to the cell wall. In order to investigate this, we have investigated whether T-DNA insertion knockouts of individual RABA genes belonging to different sub clades, impact on the composition of the plant cell wall. Single gene knockouts of the RABA1, RABA2 and RABA4 sub clades primarily affected the percentage composition of pectin, cellulose and hemicellulose within the cell wall, respectively, despite having no obvious phenotype in the whole plant. We hypothesise that vesicles carrying specific types of cargoes from the Golgi to the cell surface may be regulated by particular sub types of RABA proteins, a finding that could have wider implications for how trafficking systems work and could be a useful tool in cell wall research and other fields of plant biology.