1.
Evaluation and review of ways to differentiate sources of ethanol in postmortem blood.
Lin, Z, Wang, H, Jones, AW, Wang, F, Zhang, Y, Rao, Y
International journal of legal medicine. 2020;(6):2081-2093
Abstract
Accurate determination of a person's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is an important task in forensic toxicology laboratories because of the existence of statutory limits for driving a motor vehicle and workplace alcohol testing regulations. However, making a correct interpretation of the BAC determined in postmortem (PM) specimens is complicated, owing to the possibility that ethanol was produced in the body after death by the action of various micro-organisms (e.g., Candida species) and fermentation processes. This article reviews various ways to establish the source of ethanol in PM blood, including collection and analysis of alternative specimens (e.g., bile, vitreous humor (VH), and bladder urine), the identification of non-oxidative metabolites of ethanol, ethyl glucuronide (EtG) and ethyl sulfate (EtS), the urinary metabolites of serotonin (5-HTOL/5-HIAA), and identification of n-propanol and n-butanol in blood, which are known putrefaction products. Practical utility of the various biomarkers including specificity and stability is discussed.
2.
Medium optimization for ethanol production with Clostridium autoethanogenum with carbon monoxide as sole carbon source.
Guo, Y, Xu, J, Zhang, Y, Xu, H, Yuan, Z, Li, D
Bioresource technology. 2010;(22):8784-9
Abstract
Plackett-Burman and central composite designs were applied to optimize the medium for ethanol production by Clostridium autoethanogenum with CO as sole carbon source, and a medium containing (g/L): NaCl 1.0, KH(2)PO(4) 0.1, CaCl(2) 0.02, yeast extract 0.15, MgSO(4) 0.116, NH(4)Cl 1.694 and pH 4.74 was found optimal. The optimum ethanol yields predicted by response surface methodology (RSM) and an artificial neural network-genetic algorithm (ANN-GA) were 247.48 and 261.48mg/L, respectively. These values are similar to those obtained experimentally under the optimal conditions suggested by the statistical methods (254.26 and 259.64mg/L). The fitness of the ANN-GA model was higher than that of the RSM model. The yields obtained substantially exceed those previously reported (60-70mg/L) with this organism.