Sugar battery for portable electronics; ‘Designer’ dietary fiber

Sugar battery for portable electronics
A Virginia Tech research team has developed a battery that runs on sugar and possesses an energy storage density (596 Ah kg⁻¹) one order of magnitude higher than lithium-ion batteries. The research findings, from Y.H. Percival Zhang, Associate Professor of Biological Systems Engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering, were published in a paper “A high-energy-density sugar biobattery based on a synthetic enzymatic pathway” in the journal Nature Communications.

In as soon as three years, Zhang’s new battery could be running some of the cell phones, tablets, video games, and the myriad other electronic gadgets that require power in our energy-hungry world, Zhang said. “Sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature,” Zhang noted. “So it’s only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery.”

Zhang and his colleagues constructed a non-natural synthetic enzymatic pathway that strips all charge potentials from the sugar to generate electricity in an enzymatic fuel cell. Then, low-cost biocatalyst enzymes are used as catalysts instead of costly platinum, which is typically used in conventional batteries. Like all fuel cells, the sugar battery combines fuel—in this case, maltodextrin, a polysaccharide made from partial hydrolysis of starch—with air to generate electricity and water as the main byproducts. “We are releasing all electron charges stored in the sugar solution slowly step-by-step by using an enzyme cascade,” Zhang said.

The enzymes and fuels used to build the battery are biodegradable. The battery is also refillable and sugar can be added to it much like filling a printer cartridge with ink.

‘Designer’ dietary fiber may treat IBS
Researchers at Rush (a not-for-profit academic medical center) and Purdue University have developed a “designer” dietary fiber that may eliminate the side effects of current treatments for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), which affects 10–20% of the population. The natural starch is derived from a mixture of seaweed and starch in which the release of starch fiber in the gastrointestinal tract can be delayed, slowed, and controlled to occur in the colon, rather than in the stomach and upper intestine.

“This new product prevents the discomfort and bloating associated with current fiber therapies, while getting our new fiber into the colon and specifically distal colon where traditional fiber products typically do not reach and where many diseases of colon-like cancers develop,” said Dr. Ece Mutlu, principal investigator for the Phase II trial that will begin at Rush in early 2014. “This can provide an effective treatment for IBS, decrease the risk of colon cancer and possibly inflammatory diseases like colitis,” she added.

In an earlier Phase I study with 60 patients suffering from constipation, the newly designed fiber was shown to be safe, better tolerated and with fewer side effects than currently available fiber treatments for constipation, and it had a positive effect on intestinal microbiota composition by promoting the growth of “healthy” bacteria in the colon.

“We wanted to create a fiber with a slow rate of fermentation to avoid rapid expansion of the gut and thus decrease the likelihood of common side effects of conventionally used fibers like bloating,” said Dr. Ali Keshavarzian, Professor and Director of Gastroenterology at Rush.

The fiber is also designed to produce a high level of a short chain fatty acid, butyrate, in order to promote gut health and to have a so-called “prebiotic effect” for it to be a supplemental treatment for IBS. Currently, there are no universally effective treatment options for IBS.

The targeted, controlled-release fiber travels through the large intestine to be fermented by bacteria in the entire colon, including the descending [distal] colon where colon cancer, diverticulitis, ulcerative colitis, and irritability commonly occur. The fiber can be designed to target different locations. This enables the bacteria in the large intestine to receive important nutrients from the fiber, which promotes overall gut health.

“We worked closely with Purdue University food scientist Bruce Hamaker, Ph.D., to develop well-tolerated fiber with targeted delivery to the entire colon that could promote gut health and possibly prevent and treat colonic diseases where changes in the gut play a key role,” said Keshavarzian. 

A $2.5 million federal grant to develop the fiber invented at Rush University Medical Center and Purdue University’s College of Agriculture was given to Nutrabiotix LLC, based in the Purdue Research Park, which is commercializing the patented designer fiber created by Hamaker and Keshavarzian.

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