Ciocâlteu: Professor, Poet and Political victim

I have been using some FC Phenol reagent, which a mixture of acidic phosphomolybdate and phosphotungstate, in the lab yesterday to measure phenol content.  It provides a quick snapshot of the gross quantity of phenolic material in samples, as outlined in this elegant method provided by Dr Andrew Waterhouse from UC Davis. It is usually abbreviated to FC by staff and students as Folin- Ciocâlteu  reagent is a bit of a mouthful for English speakers.

FC reagent with its distinctive neon colouring

However I decided that I would like to find out more about the Ciocâlteu part of this reagent's name, which led me to the very interesting story of Vintilă Ciocâlteu.

I am going to start with an interesting fact that Ciocâlteu helped provide the method that has had arguably the single biggest impact on scientific literature for all time. This impact was through the work of Oliver Lowry and his team, who in 1951 published a paper "Protein Measurement with the Folin Phenol Reagent" in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. This paper and the methodology has been cited an incredible 248 682 times (as of today 1st Oct 2013), making it one of the most influential papers in modern science.  Almost a quarter million science teams have looked into this study, whch was initially made possible by the the work of Otto Folin, Wiley Glover Denis and Vintilă Ciocâlteu.

From such interesting contribution to chemistry, it is easy to follow the history of Vintilă Ciocâlteu the Romanian scientist behind this chemical, and what follows is a brief outline of his life, which I have adapted from this historical article. 

Born in Romania in 1890, he graduated as a physician in 1920. He did incredibly well with his studies an was awarded a Rockfellar scholarship to leave Romania and study in the United States at the Harvard Medical school. It was in 1925 he worked for Otto Folin, considered to be one of the founders of Biochemistry and spent many productive years in the lab, including the work on the eponymous reagent. 

Vintilă returned to Romania, where he was deeply involved in university life in Bucharest.  He gained his professorship, started new laboratories for biochemistry and eventually became Dean. Biochemistry wasn't his only passion and he was known in Romania as eminent Poet publishing two collections of poems and being widely involved in the literary scene.  

Of course the country of Romania was about to experience one its most turbulent phases in history. Initially with countries involvement in fascism, then its subsequent take over by Soviet state.  It was during the period of communism that Vintilă became under suspicion from the state as intellectual and a liberal.  This was compounded by the fact he ha received substantial training in capitalist America.  He was demoted from his post of Dean, while the authorities conducted a smear campaign to renounce his good works.  In 1947 he was summoned to the faculty senate to defend his cause.  He duly did so for two hours, presenting the importance of his career and discoveries to his peers. It was at the end of this political witch hunt that Vintilă succumbed to a massive stroke and he died on the senate floor to eternal shame of all the attending academics.

So after learning of this interesting story, I can't help think about the importance of science, politics, history and I now make it a point to tell my students about how this strange yellow/green liquid came into being. 

Jack Ward laboratory at Plumpton College

A tweet by  Dr Belinda Kemp an ex-Plumpton student and more recently ex-lecturer who is now senior scientist at CCOVI Brock University, led me to a recent paper about English & Welsh Winemaking.  In Hugh Clout's article, he outlines some of the important history of the local wine industry.  It makes mention of Jack Ward and the Merrydown drinks company and the important role they played in bring viticulture/oenology back to Britain after it had died out in the early 20th Century.

Fast forward to September 2013 and the Plumpton College wine department is about to expand into its new wing.  The new building has been under construction for just over a year, and will incorporate two significant spaces.  The first is the Rathfinny research winery, a new micro-vinification facility for conducting trials by students and researchers.  This new area was funded by generous donations from Sarah & Mark Driver of Rathfinny Estate, who also gets a mention in Hugh's article.

Rathfinny research winery 

The second area is a newly expanded laboratory for teaching and research, which was made possible by a donation from the Merrydown trust.  This laboratory will be named the Jack Ward laboratory to honour his contribution.

Jack Ward laboratory

Along with these new additions, the changes inspired by the construction have also allowed some additional expansion to the HE student area of the College.  So our students will soon be benefiting from a larger common room, group study rooms and enlarged computer suite.

New HE Computing suite

So the HE students will be here shortly and they will get to study in this area that links to the past with the future, which has all be made possible through the generosity of their predecessors.    

For more information on the project, as well as information how you can assist please go to the Plumpton College Wine Research Centre homepage

Plumpton College gets a touch of Formula 1

Courtesy of our new Randox Monaco analyzer.

Randox Monaco Analyzer

We have had a Randox Daytona previously, but this year we are exchanging our clinical unit for the newly released food-dedicated Monaco machine.  These units are great as they allow high-quality enzyme based analysis to be done on wine samples with a minimum of fuss.

Enzyme-based analysis have been a boon for the wine industry, allowing the measurement of specific wine components without interference from other compounds present in wine.  For example many wineries measure titratable acidity, but can't tell exactly what types and quantities of acid make up this reading.  However with enzyme analysis it is possible to measure exactly how much lactic, acetic, citric, malic a wine actually has.  

They work because enzymes generally catalyze only one specific reaction, so adding that enzyme will consume all the key compound without reacting with anything else.  However that in itself would be no good unless we can also measure what the product of reaction is.  Luckily the enzyme-based reactions cause the formation of the redox  biochemical NADH (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), which cause UV light to be absorbed at 340nm.  We can measure how much absorbance occurs and from this calculate how much malic acid we had to start.  

NAD+/NADH absorbance (wikimedia commons)

Traditionally this was done in laboratory by lab staff using small reagent kits and micro-pipettes, which can be expensive and fiddly to get right.

The Monaco automates this process, using tiny amounts of both sample and enzyme reagents and getting results with more precision.  Once the unit is commissioned we hope to measure the following compounds, quickly and easily.

• Lactic acid 
• Malic acid 
• Acetic acid 
• Glucose & Fructose 
• Ammonium ions
• Amino acids