Abstract:
Biological stain (blue stain) reduces wood value and
prevents its use in many structural applications. Increasing
environmental concerns have restricted the chemicals
available for controlling this damage. As a result,
biological control has received more interest. The
application of these systems to wood has been limited due to
their inability to reliably produce effective stain control
under mill conditions. Many of these problems stem from a
poor understanding of how these organisms function as
bioprotectants.
In this thesis, a technique was identified to extract
proteins from ponderosa pine sapwood samples colonized by
bioprotectants and/or sapstain fungi. These extracts could
be used to study the effects of the bioprotectants on
various target stain fungi. The effects of extraction media
and sample incubation period on protein recovery and enzyme
activity in extracts were evaluated. Protein recovery and activity in extracts were evaluated. Protein recovery and
enzyme activity were affected by the extraction time, the
medium conditions of the bioprotectants and the sample
incubation conditions. The greatest protein recovery
occurred, under the conditions of this study, when wood
samples were incubated for thirty days and extracted for
twelve hours using 50 mM sodium acetate buffer at pH 5.0
with 0.05 % Tween 80. The surfactant, Tween 80, greatly
enhanced protein recovery. Longer incubation time (thirty
days) was associated with greater produce cellobiase and
xylosidase activities but, in contrast, glucosidase
activities were greater with shorter incubation time (ten
days), under the conditions of this study.
