Design of eco-friendly fabric softeners: Structure, rheology and interaction with cellulose nanocrystals.

HYPOTHESIS: Concentrated fabric softeners are water-based formulations containing around 10-15 wt% of double tailed esterquat surfactants primarily synthesized from palm oil. In recent patents, it was shown that a significant part of the surfactant contained in today's formulations can be reduced by circa 50% and replaced by natural guar polymers without detrimental effects on the deposition and softening performances. We presently study the structure and rheology of these softener formulations and identify the mechanisms at the origin of these effects. EXPERIMENTS: The polymer additives used are guar gum polysaccharides, one cationic and one modified through addition of hydroxypropyl groups. Formulations with and without guar polymers are investigated using optical and cryo-transmission electron microscopy, small-angle light and X-ray scattering and finally rheology. Similar techniques are applied to study the phase behavior of softener and cellulose nanocrystals considered here as a model for cotton. FINDINGS: The esterquat surfactants are shown to assemble into micron-sized vesicles in the dilute and concentrated regimes. In the former, guar addition in small amounts does not impair the vesicular structure and stability. In the concentrated regime, cationic guars induce a local crowding associated to depletion interactions and leads to the formation of a local lamellar order. In rheology, adjusting the polymer concentration at 1/10th that of the surfactant is sufficient to offset the decrease of the elastic property associated with the surfactant reduction. In conclusion, we have shown that through an appropriate choice of natural additives it is possible to lower the concentration of surfactants in fabric conditioners by about half, a result that could represent a significant breakthrough in current home care formulations.

The wheat multidomain cystatin TaMDC1 displays antifungal, antibacterial, and insecticidal activities in planta.

KEY MESSAGE: Expression of the TaMDC1 in transgenic tomato plants confer resistance to bacterial and fungal pathogens, as well as an insect pest and thus prove in planta function of the wheat cystatin. Cystatins are the polypeptides with cysteine proteinase inhibitory activities. Plant cystatins or phytocystatins are known to contribute to plant resistance against insect pests. Recently, increasing data proved that some of the phytocystatins also have antifungal activities in vitro. Here, we functionally characterized a wheat multidomain cystatin, TaMDC1, using in planta assays. Expression of TaMDC1 in wheat seedlings is up-regulated in response to methyl jasmonate and salicylic acid, indicating that TaMDC1 is involved in biotic stress responses mediated by these plant hormones. The TaMDC1 cDNA was integrated in tomato genome and expressed under cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter. Four transgenic plants that show high level of the transgene expression were selected by RNA gel blot and immunoblot analysis and utilized to assess biotic stress resistance against the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, the fungal pathogens Botrytis cinerea and Alternaria alternata, and the insect pest Colorado potato beetle (CPB, Leptinotarsa decemlineata). Detached leaf inoculation assays revealed that the tomato plants expressing TaMDC1 showed high levels of resistance against P. syringae and A. alternata, and elevated tolerance against B. cinerea. Sustenance of L. decemlineata larvae to the transgenic plants demonstrated inhibition of CPB larvae growth. Inhibitory activity of TaMDC1 against selected pathogens was also demonstrated by in vitro assays with total protein extracted from transgenic tomato plants. Taken together, the presented data suggest that TaMDC1 is involved in a broad spectrum biotic stress resistance in planta.

Fabric Softener-Cellulose Nanocrystal Interaction: A Model for Assessing Surfactant Deposition on Cotton.

There is currently a renewed interest for improving household and personal-care formulations to provide more environment-friendly products. Fabric conditioners used as softeners have to fulfill a number of stability and biodegradability requirements. They should also display significant adsorption on cotton under the conditions of use. The quantification of surfactant adsorption remains however difficult because the fabric-woven structure is complex and deposited amounts are generally small. Here, we propose a method to evaluate cellulose-surfactant interactions with increased detection sensitivity. The method is based on the use of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) in lieu of micron-sized fibers or yarns, combined with different techniques, including light scattering, optical and electron microscopy, and electrophoretic mobility. CNCs are rod-shaped nanoparticles in the form of 200 nm laths that are negatively charged and can be dispersed in bulk solutions. In this work, we use a double-tailed cationic surfactant present in fabric softener. Results show that the surfactants self-assemble into unilamellar, multivesicular, and multilamellar vesicles, and the interaction with CNCs is driven by electrostatics. Mutual interactions are strong and lead to the formation of large-scale aggregates, where the vesicles remain intact at the cellulose surface. The technique developed here could be exploited to rapidly assess the fabric conditioner efficiency obtained by varying the nature and content of their chemical additives.

Differential expression of wheat genes during cold acclimation.

Overwintering crops such as winter wheat display significant increase in freezing tolerance during a period of cold acclimation (CA). To gain better understanding of molecular mechanisms of CA, it is important to unravel functions and regulations of CA-associated genes. Differential screening of a cDNA library constructed from cold acclimated crown tissue of winter wheat identified three novel CA-associated cDNA clones. Nucleotide sequence analysis showed that the clones encode a high mobility globular protein (HMGB1), a glycine-rich RNA-binding protein (TaGRP2), and a LEA D-11 dehydrin (DHN14). Accumulation of the three mRNAs during 14 days of CA was differentially regulated. In response to drought, and ABA, DHN14 mRNA rapidly accumulated while HMGB1 and TaGRP2 mRNA levels remained unchanged. The possible functions of each of these genes in cold acclimation are discussed.

Synergistic sphere-to-rod micelle transition in mixed solutions of sodium dodecyl sulfate and cocoamidopropyl betaine.

Static and dynamic light scattering experiments show that the mixed micelles of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and cocoamidopropyl betaine (CAPB) undergo a sphere-to-rod transition at unexpectedly low total surfactant concentrations, about 10 mM. The lowest transition concentration is observed at molar fraction 0.8 of CAPB in the surfactant mixture. The transition brings about a sharp increase in the viscosity of the respective surfactant solutions due to the growth of rodlike micelles. Parallel experiments with mixed solutions of CAPB and sodium laureth sulfate (sodium dodecyl-trioxyethylene sulfate, SDP3S) showed that the sphere-to-rod transition in SDP3S/CAPB mixtures occurs at higher surfactant concentrations, above 40 mM. The observed difference in the transition concentrations for SDS and SDP3S can be explained by the bulkier SDP3S headgroup. The latter should lead to larger mean area per molecule in the micelles containing SDP3S and, hence, to smaller spontaneous radius of curvature of the micelles (i.e., less favored transition from spherical to rodlike micelles). The static light scattering data are used to determine the mean aggregation number and the effective size of the spherical mixed SDS/CAPB micelles. From the dependence of the aggregation number on the surfactant concentration, the mean energy for transfer of a surfactant molecule from a spherical into a rodlike micelle is estimated.

Green-tissue-specific expression of a reconstructed cry1C gene encoding the active fragment of Bacillus thuringiensis delta-endotoxin in haploid tobacco plants conferring resistance to Spodoptera litura.

The DNA sequence of a truncated cry1C gene encoding the active fragment of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) delta-endotoxin was fully reconstructed by introduction of silent mutations. Each of the truncated wild type and the synthetic genes encoding the active fragment of the protoxin was introduced into haploid tobacco plants under the control of the rbcS promoter. To facilitate selection of transgenic tobacco plants with high insecticidal activity, a fusion gene encoding both rat CYP1A1 cytochrome P450 and yeast NADPH-P450 oxidoreductase was cotransformed with the wild type cry1C gene. The synthetic gene elevated the levels of Cry1C protein and the mRNA in transgenic tobacco plants as well as mortality in Spodoptera litura larvae. The Cry1C protein was accumulated mainly in the leaf tissues of the transgenic tobacco plants. The results reported here imply that the green-tissue-specific expression of the synthetic cry1C gene is useful for the control of S. litura which was rather resistant to the other types of Bt toxins.