Water Filtration Using Plant Xylem

Boutilier, Michael S. H.; Lee, Jong-Ho; Chambers, Valerie A.; Venkatesh, Varsha; Karnik, Rohit

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089934

Cited by 82 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Among various water pollutants, bacteria are one of the most deadly contaminating sources that has posed tremendous threats to human health, especially in developing countries . Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs), known for their antibacterial properties, are prone to aggregate in physiological solutions, and therefore are limited in performance.…”

Section: Sustainable Application: Wastewater Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wood‐Based Nanotechnologies toward Sustainability

et al. 2017

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to alleviate our reliance on petroleum-based materials. Beyond abundance and biodegradability, wood is also a carbon-neutral material that does not contribute net CO 2 increase due to the cyclic carbon fixation during photosynthesis and release during degradation. Given these advantages, wood has been considered as a potential replacement for petroleum-based materials to support continued sustainable growth.Throughout history, wood has been the primary material for tools, buil dings, and fuels that support human activity. However, the functions of wood have been limited by its intrinsic properties including bulkiness, low mechanical properties, nontransparency, and nonconductivity. Therefore, it has been gradually replaced by other materials, such as synthetic polymers, glass, and metals. With the advancement of nanotechnology, nanomaterials derived from wood have been successfully synthesized and are well suited to expand its application to more emerging areas such as the environment, energy, and biomedicine. Therefore, given the rapid expansion of bio-based nanotechnologies and the stringent demands for sustainable development, it is pressing to revisit wood-based materials as sustainable sources to satisfy our continuous needs, alleviating our fear of the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources.Here, we cover the most recent advances in designing hierarchical structures using wood and wood-based nanomaterials, including both the bottom-up assembly from nanocellulose into varied 1D, 2D, and 3D forms and the recently developed top-down approaches that introduce novel functionalities to existing wood hierarchical structures. Progress in the application of these hierarchical structures to emerging sustainable areas will be reviewed to emphasize how these traditional woody materials, now transformed by nanotechnologies, may be used to improve the sustainability of biodegradable flexible electronics, natural energy harvesting, thermal regulation in green buildings, sustainable energy storage, environmental remediation, and efficient solar steam generation toward desalination. To date, several very important reviews on the structures and applications of wood-and cellulose-based materials have been published, and due to the limited space available here, inclusion of comprehensive knowledge on all these aspects is infeasible. For more detailed reviews on each aspect, the readers will be directed to other more comprehensive or specific reviews. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The primary focus here will be placed on how these bio-based materials could potentially With over 30% global land coverage, the forest is one of nature's most generous gifts to human beings, providing shelters and materials for all living beings. Apart from being sustainable, renewable, and biodegradable, wood and its derivative materials are also extremely fascinating from a materials aspect, with numerous advantages including porous and hierarchical structure, excellent mechanical performance, and versatile chemistry. Here, strategies for designing n...

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Section: Sustainable Application: Wastewater Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wood‐Based Nanotechnologies toward Sustainability

et al. 2017

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“…The filter was able to eliminate 99.9% bacteria and is recommended as being sufficient to provide safe drinking water for one person. This meaningful finding reveals the potential of using nature's bounty in the form of plant xylem to address the needs of developing countries with limited resources (87).…”

Section: Plant Xylem For Water Filtrationmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…In a pioneering work by Boutilier et al (87), POU filtration devices were prepared from the plant xylem from the sapwood of coniferous trees. The idea was to use the minute pores present in the xylem tissues, which range from a few to 500 nm in size depending upon the plant species (mostly coniferous trees), as a filter.…”

Section: Plant Xylem For Water Filtrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clean Water for Developing Countries

Pandit

Kumar

2015

Annu. Rev. Chem. Biomol. Eng.

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Availability of safe drinking water, a vital natural resource, is still a distant dream to many around the world, especially in developing countries. Increasing human activity and industrialization have led to a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological pollutants entering water bodies and affecting human lives. Efforts to develop efficient, economical, and technologically sound methods to produce clean water for developing countries have increased worldwide. We focus on solar disinfection, filtration, hybrid filtration methods, treatment of harvested rainwater, herbal water disinfection, and arsenic removal technologies. Simple, yet innovative water treatment devices ranging from use of plant xylem as filters, terafilters, and hand pumps to tippy taps designed indigenously are methods mentioned here. By describing the technical aspects of major water disinfection methods relevant for developing countries on medium to small scales and emphasizing their merits, demerits, economics, and scalability, we highlight the current scenario and pave the way for further research and development and scaling up of these processes. This review focuses on clean drinking water, especially for rural populations in developing countries. It describes various water disinfection techniques that are not only economically viable and energy efficient but also employ simple methodologies that are effective in reducing the physical, chemical, and biological pollutants found in drinking water to acceptable limits.

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“…Expansin co-occurrence with gh5 domains is over-represented in pathogenic bacterial species that can move through xylem (8), suggesting there may be emergent properties of the EXLX-GH5 protein complex that are uniquely adaptive for xylem-colonizing plant pathogenic bacteria. Healthy plants have effective physical barriers to allow the flow of xylem sap while excluding bacteria; pit membranes between adjacent tracheids and perforation plates between xylem vessels are openings on a nanometric scale, while most bacteria are ∼1µm (70). One hypothesis is that bacterial expansins may non-enzymatically ‘loosen’ the cellulose and pectin matrix at the perforation plates or at the pit membranes in order to increase their size enough to allow the passage of bacterial cells (71-74).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A horizontally acquired expansin gene increases virulence of the emerging plant pathogenErwinia tracheiphila

Rocha

Shapiro

Kolter

2019

Preprint

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19 Author Contributions: JR and LRS conceived of the study. JR designed and conducted 20 molecular protocols and lab experiments. LRS conducted computational analyses and 21 performed experiments. JR, LRS and RK interpreted experimental data. JR and LRS 22 wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and JR, LRS and RK added critical revisions. 23 2 24 Data Deposition Statement: Analysis scripts and input files associated with 25 reconstruction of phylogenetic trees are available at 26 https://github.com/lshapiro31/gh5.expansin.phylogenetics 27 3 Abstract 28All land plants depend on proteins called 'expansins' that non-enzymatically loosen structural 29 cellulose, enabling cell wall extension during normal growth. Surprisingly, expansin genes are 30 also present -but functionally uncharacterized -in taxonomically diverse bacteria and fungi that 31 do not produce cellulosic cell walls. Here, we find that Erwinia tracheiphila 32 (Enterobacteriaceae), the causative agent of bacterial wilt of cucurbits, has horizontally acquired 33 an operon with a microbial expansin (exlx) gene and a glycoside hydrolase family 5 (gh5) gene. 34 E. tracheiphila is an unusually virulent plant pathogen that induces systemic wilt symptoms 35 followed by plant death, and has only recently emerged into cultivated cucurbit populations in 36 temperate Eastern North America. Plant inoculation experiments with deletion mutants show that 37 EXLX-GH5 is a secreted virulence factor that confers efficient xylem movement and 38 colonization ability to E. tracheiphila. Bacterial colonization of xylem blocks sap flow, inducing 39 wilt symptoms and causing plant death. Together, these results suggest that the horizontal 40 acquisition of the exlx-gh5 locus was likely a key step driving the recent emergence of E. 41 tracheiphila. The increase in E. tracheiphila virulence conferred by microbial expansins, the 42 presence of this gene in many other bacterial and fungal wilt-inducing plant pathogen species, 43 and the amenability of microbial expansins to horizontal gene transfer suggest this gene may be 44 an under-appreciated virulence factor in taxonomically diverse agricultural pathogens. 45 46 4 Importance 47Erwinia tracheiphila is a bacterial plant pathogen that causes a fatal wilt infection in cucurbit 48 crop plants. Here, we report that E. tracheiphila has horizontally acquired a microbial expansin 49 gene (exlx) adjacent to a glycoside hydrolase family 5 (gh5) gene. Expansins are predominantly 50 associated with plants due to their essential role in loosening structural cell wall cellulose during 51 normal growth. We find that the EXLX and GH5 proteins in E. tracheiphila function as a single 52 complex to facilitate xylem colonization, possibly by manipulating the size of xylem structures 53 that normally exclude the passage of bacteria. This suggests that horizontal acquisition of the 54 exlx-gh5 locus was likely a key step in the recent emergence of E. tracheiphila as an unusually 55 virulent plant pathogen. The presence of microbial expansin gene...

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Water Filtration Using Plant Xylem

Cited by 82 publications

References 17 publications

Wood‐Based Nanotechnologies toward Sustainability

Wood‐Based Nanotechnologies toward Sustainability

Clean Water for Developing Countries

A horizontally acquired expansin gene increases virulence of the emerging plant pathogenErwinia tracheiphila

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