Study on Marine Corrosion and Antifouling Behavior of Copper Alloys Exposed to Sea Areas in China

The relationship of corrosion resistance and antifouling behavior of 19 Cu alloys exposed to seawater of Qingdao ,Xiamen,Yulin sea areas in China for 1,2,4,8 year intervals was studied .The experiments were carried on by analyzing the composition of corrosion films formed on the surface of alloy specimens during the immersion time and by using OM,SEM,EDXA and AES experiment methods.The results verify the view point that it is the cuprous oxide film which played an important role in antifouling property of Cu alloys in seawater and throw a light on the view point in details further.The influence of different sea areas on the antifouling property of Cu alloys is also discussed.

Correlation Between Microstructure and Corrosion Behavior of Two 90Cu10Ni Alloy Tubes

Two kinds of 90Cu10 Ni tubes with different service lives（more than 3 years and only 1 year,respectively）under identical working conditions were studied by an immersion test in a 3.5 wt% NaCl solution and the electron backscattered diffraction（EBSD） technique.The morphology after immersion showed severer corrosion attack at the grain boundaries of the tube with shorter service life compared with the tube with longer service life.The grain boundary characterization distributions（GBCDs） of the two tubes obtained by EBSD revealed more Σ3 boundaries and twins,and larger random boundary meshes in the tube with longer service life.A short immersion test in a modified Livingston＇s solution was conducted to evaluate the tendency to corrosion attack of different types of the grain boundaries.SEM and AFM were used to characterize the corrosion morphologies of the boundaries.A strong correlation between varying depths of corrosion grooves and types of the grain boundaries was obtained.The influence of deviation angle of low Σ boundaries on corrosion resistance of the grain boundaries was also discussed.It is concluded that a special ‘‘grain boundary engineering＇＇（GBE） treatment has been performed on the tube with longer service life.It is proposed that the optimized GBCD is responsible for the better service performance of the tube.

Sequence-based Functional Metagenomics Reveals Novel Natural Diversity of Functional CopA in Environmental Microbiomes

Exploring the natural diversity of functional genes/proteins from environmental DNA in high throughput remains challenging.In this study,we developed a sequence-based functional metagenomics procedure for mining the diversity of copper(Cu)resistance gene copA in global microbiomes,by combining the metagenomic assembly technology,local BLAST,evolutionary trace analysis(ETA),chemical synthesis,and conventional functional genomics.In total,87 metagenomes were collected from a public database and subjected to copA detection,resulting in 93,899 hits.Manual curation of 1214 hits of high confidence led to the retrieval of 517 unique CopA candidates,which were further subjected to ETA.Eventually,175 novel copA sequences of high quality were discovered.Phylogenetic analysis showed that almost all these putative CopA proteins were distantly related to known CopA proteins,with 55 sequences from totally unknown species.Ten novel and three known copA genes were chemically synthesized for further functional genomic tests using the Cu-sensitive Escherichia coli(DcopA).The growth test and Cu uptake determination showed that five novel clones had positive effects on host Cu resistance and uptake.One recombinant harboring copA-like 15(copAL15)successfully restored Cu resistance of the host with a substantially enhanced Cu uptake.Two novel copA genes were fused with the gfp gene and expressed in E.coli for microscopic observation.Imaging results showed that they were successfully expressed and their proteins were localized to the membrane.The results here greatly expand the diversity of known CopA proteins,and the sequence-based procedure developed overcomes biases in length,screening methods,and abundance of conventional functional metagenomics.