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Topic Review
Pigments Production from Potential Microbes in Submerged Fermentation
Pigments from bacteria, fungi, yeast, cyanobacteria, and microalgae have been gaining more demand in the food, leather, and textile industries due to their natural origin and effective bioactive functions. Mass production of microbial pigments using inexpensive and ecofriendly agro-industrial residues is gaining more demand in the current research due to their low cost, natural origin, waste utilization, and high pigment stimulating characteristics. A wide range of natural substrates has been employed in submerged fermentation as carbon and nitrogen sources to enhance the pigment production from these microorganisms to obtain the required quantity of pigments. Submerged fermentation is proven to yield more pigment when added with agro-waste residues.
  • 1.4K
  • 12 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Pure Mycelial Materials
Modern efforts to influence materials science with principles of biology have allowed fungal mycelial materials to take a foothold and develop novel solutions for the circular bioeconomy of tomorrow. However, recent studies have shown that the value of tomorrow’s green materials is not determined simply by their environmental viability, but rather by their ability to make the polluting materials of today obsolete. With an inherently strong structure of chitin and β-glucan, the ever-adaptable mycelia of fungi can compete at the highest levels with a litany of materials from leather to polyurethane foam to paper to wood. There are significant efforts to optimize pure mycelial materials (PMMs) through the entire process of species and strain selection, mycelial growth, and fabrication.
  • 1.4K
  • 15 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Marine Natural Products from Tunicates and Associated Microbes
Marine tunicates are identified as a potential source of marine natural products (MNPs), demonstrating a wide range of biological properties, like antimicrobial and anticancer activities. The symbiotic relationship between tunicates and specific microbial groups has revealed the acquisition of microbial compounds by tunicates for defensive purpose. For instance, yellow pigmented compounds, “tambjamines”, produced by the tunicate, Sigillina signifera (Sluiter, 1909), primarily originated from their bacterial symbionts, which are involved in their chemical defense function, indicating the ecological role of symbiotic microbial association with tunicates.
  • 1.4K
  • 10 Oct 2023
Topic Review
Therapeutic Applications of Nano-Phytopharmaceuticals
Phytopharmaceuticals have been widely used globally since ancient times and acknowledged by healthcare professionals and patients for their superior therapeutic value and fewer side effects compared to modern medicines. Dose reduction, improved bioavailability, receptor-selective binding, and targeted delivery of phytopharmaceuticals can be likely achieved by molding them into specific nano-formulations. 
  • 1.4K
  • 25 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Enterocin as a Biopreservative for Raw Meat Products
Food preservation is a method used to handle and treat food products to slow down food spoilage and subsequently reduce the risk of foodborne illness. Nowadays, the demand for natural preservatives over chemical preservatives in food is increasing due to the awareness of consuming healthy food products without the risk of harmful side effects. Thus, the research and development of preservation techniques, referred to as biopreservation, is growing rapidly. In biopreservation methods, microorganisms that are known as lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and their antimicrobial substances are used to extend shelf life and maintain the nutritional value of foods. Among the most studied LAB are from the genus Enterococcus, which produces a bacteriocin called enterocin. Bacteriocins are ribosomal-synthesized antimicrobial peptides that are capable of inhibiting the growth of pathogenic bacteria that cause spoilage in food. LAB is generally regarded as safe (GRAS) for human consumption. 
  • 1.4K
  • 11 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Structure and Properties of Glucansucrase
Glucansucrase (GS) belongs to the GH70 family, which not only can synthesize exopolysaccharides (EPSs) with different physicochemical properties through glucosyl transglycosylation (by hydrolyzing sucrose) but can also produce oligosaccharides. 
  • 1.4K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Molybdenum to Molybdenum Blue
Molybdenum (Mo) microbial bioreduction is a phenomenon that is beginning to be recognized globally as a tool for the remediation of molybdenum toxicity.
  • 1.4K
  • 08 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Overview of Fucoidan
The marine macroalgae produce a collection of bioactive polysaccharides, of which the sulfated heteropolysaccharide fucoidan produced by brown algae of the class Phaeophyceae has received worldwide attention because of its particular biological actions that confer nutritional and health benefits to humans and animals. The biological actions of fucoidan are determined by their structure and chemical composition, which are largely influenced by the geographical location, harvest season, extraction process, etc. 
  • 1.4K
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Combination Strategies of Different Antimicrobials
Despite the discovery and development of an array of antimicrobial agents, multidrug resistance poses a major threat to public health and progressively increases mortality. The use of antimicrobial agents in combination can produce synergistic effects if each drug invades a different target or signaling pathway with a different mechanism of action. Therefore, drug combinations can achieve a higher probability and selectivity of therapeutic responses than single drugs.
  • 1.4K
  • 28 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Active Compounds from Antrodia cinnamomea
Antrodia cinnamomea is a precious and popular edible and medicinal mushroom. It has attracted increasing attention due to its various and excellent bioactivities, such as hepatoprotection, hypoglycemic, antioxidant, antitumor, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulation, and gut microbiota regulation properties. To elucidate its bioactivities and develop novel functional foods or medicines, numerous studies have focused on the isolation and identification of the bioactive compounds of A. cinnamomea. 
  • 1.4K
  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Komagataella phaffii Biotechnology
The need for a more sustainable society has prompted the development of bio-based processes to produce fuels, chemicals, and materials in substitution for fossil-based ones. In this context, microorganisms have been employed to convert renewable carbon sources into various products. The methylotrophic yeast Komagataella phaffii has been extensively used in the production of heterologous proteins. The obligate aerobic yeast Komagataella phaffii is a non-pathogenic certified and generally recognized as a safe (GRAS) microorganism. It is classified in the Saccharomycetales order and Saccharomycetaceae family. 
  • 1.4K
  • 10 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Angiogenic Potential in Biological Hydrogels
Hydrogels are three-dimensional (3D) materials able to absorb and retain water in large amounts while maintaining their structural stability. Due to their considerable biocompatibility and similarity with the body’s tissues, hydrogels are one of the most promising groups of biomaterials. The main application of these hydrogels is in regenerative medicine, in which they allow the formation of an environment suitable for cell differentiation and growth. (Draft for definition)
  • 1.4K
  • 21 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Application of CRISPR/Cas Systems in Fungal Genetic Engineering
Fungi represent an important source of bioactive secondary metabolites (SMs), which have wide applications in many fields, including medicine, agriculture, human health, and many other industries. The genes involved in SM biosynthesis are usually clustered adjacent to each other into a region known as a biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC). The advanced CRISPR/Cas system has revolutionized fungal genetic engineering and enabled the discovery of novel bioactive compounds. 
  • 1.4K
  • 29 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Cyanobacterial Polyhydroxyalkanoates
Conventional petrochemical plastics have become a serious environmental problem. Its unbridled use, especially in non-durable goods, has generated an accumulation of waste that is difficult to measure, threatening aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The replacement of these plastics with cleaner alternatives, such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), can only be achieved by cost reductions in the production of microbial bioplastics, in order to compete with the very low costs of fossil fuel plastics. The biggest costs are carbon sources and nutrients, which can be appeased with the use of photosynthetic organisms, such as cyanobacteria, that have a minimum requirement for nutrients, and also using agro-industrial waste, such as the livestock industry, which in turn benefits from the by-products of PHA biotechnological production, for example pigments and nutrients. Circular economy can help solve the current problems in the search for a sustainable production of bioplastic: reducing production costs, reusing waste, mitigating CO2, promoting bioremediation and making better use of cyanobacteria metabolites in different industries.
  • 1.4K
  • 23 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Fungal Endophytes and Agricultural Plant Protection
Virtually all examined plant species harbour fungal endophytes which asymptomatically infect or colonize living plant tissues, including leaves, branches, stems and roots. Endophyte-host interactions are complex and span the mutualist–pathogen continuum. Notably, mutualist endophytes can confer increased fitness to their host plants compared with uncolonized plants, which has attracted interest in their potential application in integrated plant health management strategies.
  • 1.4K
  • 09 Feb 2022
Topic Review
Air Pollution on Human Microbial Community
A balanced microbiota composition is requisite for normal physiological functions of the human body. Several environmental factors such as air pollutants may perturb the human microbiota composition. It is noticeable that currently around 99% of the world’s population is breathing polluted air. Air pollution’s debilitating health impacts have been studied scrupulously, including in the human gut microbiota.
  • 1.4K
  • 06 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Natural Carotenoids
Biotechnologically produced carotenoids occupy an important place in the scientific research. Owing to their role as natural pigments and their high antioxidant properties, microbial carotenoids have been proposed as alternatives to their synthetic counterparts. Natural carotenoids can be obtained either by extraction from plants or via microbial production. To this end, many studies are focusing on their efficient and sustainable production from renewable substrates. Besides the development of an efficient upstream process, their separation and purification as well as their analysis from the microbial biomass confers another important aspect to be adressed.
  • 1.4K
  • 15 May 2023
Topic Review
VLSI Structures for DNA Sequencing
DNA sequencing is a critical functionality in biomedical research, and technical advances that improve it have important implications for human health. The overall structure of DNA is negatively charged and has a negative electrostatic potential due to a negatively charged phosphate backbone. Nucleotides are electroactive compounds that produce reduction and oxidation signals after hybridization. These high electrostatic potentials can be exploited with VLSI charge-sensitive electronic structures. The sequence of DNA is encoded within each nitrogenous base: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), or thymine (T), and this 4-bit system allows for large amounts of information to be stored in a single DNA molecule, which may contain upward of 3 billion bases. 
  • 1.4K
  • 28 Mar 2022
Topic Review
CRISPR-Cas9 Innovations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been for a long time a common model for fundamental biological studies and a popular biotechnological engineering platform to produce chemicals, fuels, and pharmaceuticals due to its peculiar characteristics. Both lines of research require an effective editing of the native genetic elements or the inclusion of heterologous pathways into the yeast genome. Although S. cerevisiae is a well-known host with several molecular biology tools available, a more precise tool is still needed. The clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats–associated Cas9 (CRISPR-Cas9) system is a current, widespread genome editing tool. The implementation of a reprogrammable, precise, and specific method, such as CRISPR-Cas9, to edit the S. cerevisiae genome has revolutionized laboratory practices.
  • 1.4K
  • 17 Jan 2022
Topic Review
DprE1 and MmpL3
DprE1 is an enzyme that works in concert with DprE2 to synthesize the unique arabinose precursor for lipoarabinomannan and arabinogalactan, essential building blocks of the mycobacterial cell-wall [1]. To date, more than 15 pharmacophores were found to inhibit DprE1 activity. MmpL3 is the only Mtb transporter of trehalose monomycolate, required for the formation of the mycolic acid layer of the cell wall [2], and has been found to be affected by several molecules. Recently, direct inhibition of MmpL3 by BM212, the first compound found to hit MmpL3, was shown using spheroplasts [2], while the dissipation of proton motive force is the proposed mechanism for the other molecules [3].
  • 1.3K
  • 27 Oct 2020
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