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Topic Review
Applications of Nanocellulose/Nanocarbon Composites: Focus on Biotechnology and Medicine
Nanocellulose/nanocarbon composites are newly-emerging smart hybrid materials containing cellulose nanoparticles, such as nanofibrils and nanocrystals, and carbon nanoparticles, such as “classical” carbon allotropes (fullerenes, graphene, nanotubes and nanodiamonds), or other carbon nanostructures (carbon nanofibers, carbon quantum dots, activated carbon and carbon black). The nanocellulose component acts as a dispersing agent and homogeneously distribute the carbon nanoparticles in aqueous environment. Nanocellulose/nanocarbon composites can be prepared with many advantageous properties, such as high mechanical strength, flexibility, stretchability, tunable thermal and electrical conductivity, tunable optical transparency, photodynamic and photothermal activity, nanoporous character and high adsorption capacity. They are therefore promising for a wide range of industrial applications, such as energy generation, storage and conversion, water purification, food packaging, construction of fire retardants and shape memory devices. They also hold great promise for biomedical applications, such as radical scavenging, photodynamic and photothermal therapy of tumors and microbial infections, drug delivery, biosensorics, isolation of various biomolecules, electrical stimulation of damaged tissues (e.g. cardiac, neural), neural and bone tissue engineering, engineering of blood vessels and advanced wound dressing, e.g. with antimicrobial and antitumor activity. However, the potential cytotoxicity and immunogenicity of the composites and their components must also be taken into account.
  • 4.7K
  • 01 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Soil Desalination
Salinity is a major threat that reduces the capacity of all types of terrestrial ecosystems to provide services by threatening biodiversity, lowering agriculture production, degrading the environment, contaminating groundwater below standard levels, increasing flood risks, creating food security concerns, and limiting a community’s economic growth.
  • 4.7K
  • 21 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Surface Plasmon Resonance Based Biosensors
Over the years, biosensors have acquired increasing importance in a wide range of applications due to synergistic studies of various scientific disciplines, determining their great commercial potential and revealing how nanotechnology and biotechnology can be strictly connected. In the present scenario, biosensors have increased their detection limit and sensitivity unthinkable until a few years ago. The most widely used biosensors are optical-based devices such as surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based biosensors and fluorescence-based biosensors.
  • 4.7K
  • 23 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Rhizosphere
The rhizosphere serves as a hotspot for diverse microbial activity. It is an intricate ecosystem comprising nutrient-rich soil that surrounds the plant roots, which provides a pool for plant–microbe communication. The term “Rhizomicrobiome” is defined as a microbial community that is present in the rhizosphere. A variety of microorganisms reside within the rhizosphere, including bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protists, and invertebrates. Most of the microbiome studies within the context of rhizosphere signaling have been focused on the bacteria and fungi that make up the major portion of the rhizosphere microbiome.
  • 4.7K
  • 17 May 2022
Topic Review
Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria
Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) are a group of anaerobic microorganisms that can be present in the environment and gastrointestinal tract as a part of the intestinal microbiome and can be involved in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), including ulcerative colitis in the human and animals.
  • 4.6K
  • 07 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Helichrysum arenarium
Helichrysum arenarium (L.) Moench, belonging to the Asteraceae family, is known in traditional medicine for its diuretic, choleretic, and anti-inflammatory properties. Helichrysum arenarium (sandy everlasting) is a source of active pharmacological compounds used in complementary medicine to prevent digestive and hepatobiliary illnesses. 
  • 4.5K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Plant Promoters
One of the strategies to overcome diseases or abiotic stress in crops is the use of improved varieties. Genetic improvement could be accomplished through different methods, including conventional breeding, induced mutation, genetic transformation, or gene editing. The gene function and regulated expression through promoters are necessary for transgenic crops to improve specific traits. The variety of promoter sequences has increased in the generation of genetically modified crops because they could lead to the expression of the gene responsible for the improved trait in a specific manner.
  • 4.3K
  • 03 Jul 2023
Topic Review
Agarwood
Agarwood, popularly known as oudh or gaharu, is a fragrant resinous wood of high commercial value, traded worldwide and primarily used for its distinctive fragrance in incense, perfumes, and medicine. This fragrant wood is created when Aquilaria trees are wounded and infected by fungi, producing resin as a defense mechanism. The depletion of natural agarwood caused by overharvesting amidst increasing demand has caused this fragrant defensive resin of endangered Aquilaria to become a rare and valuable commodity. Given that instances of natural infection are quite low, artificial induction, including biological inoculation, is being conducted to induce agarwood formation.
  • 4.3K
  • 06 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Plant Cell Culture
The large-scale production of plant-derived secondary metabolites (PDSM) in bioreactors to meet the increasing demand for bioactive compounds for the treatment and prevention of degenerative diseases is nowadays considered an engineering challenge. Plant cell culture (PCC) is nowadays recognized as a promising, renewable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly alternative to obtain PDSM out of wild plants. PCC accounts for the virtues of whole-plant cultivation systems and offers significant advantages, such as controlled manufacture due to standardized environmental conditions, i.e., it is not seasonal dependent, makes use of low amounts of water, and pesticides and herbicides are not required, achieving better quality in the desired product.
  • 4.3K
  • 29 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Cry Proteins in Biotechnology
A hallmark of Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria is the formation of one or more parasporal crystal (Cry) proteins during sporulation. The toxicity of these proteins is highly specific to insect larvae, exerting lethal effects in different insect species but not in humans or other mammals. In 1989, a nomenclature was proposed to classify proteins according to their sequence and specificity. In this initial nomenclature, there were only four classes. The first class included proteins with action against Lepidoptera with a size of approximately 130–140 kDa. The second class included smaller proteins (65 kDa) with activity against Lepidoptera and Diptera; this class included only two members: CryIIA and CryIIB. The third class constituted the active toxin against Coleoptera, CryIIIA. The last class was Cry1A, the members of which were closely related: they were called Cry1Aa, Cry1Ab, and Cry1Ac.
  • 4.3K
  • 01 Feb 2022
Topic Review
Microneedles
Microneedles (MNs) represent micron-sized structures, consisting of a variety of materials, that have been recently emerged as physical enhances for a painless and safe transdermal delivery of drugs through the skin.
  • 4.3K
  • 02 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Applications of Photosynthetic Systems
       In biological and life science applications photosynthesis is an important process that involves the absorption and transformation of sunlight into chemical energy. During the photosynthesis process, the light photons are captured by the green chlorophyll pigments in their photosynthetic antennae and further funneled to the reaction center. One of the mostimportant light harvesting complexes that are highly important in the study of photosynthesis is the membrane-attached Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex found in the green sulfur bacteria. In this review, we discuss the mathematical formulations and computational modeling of some of the light harvesting complexes including FMO. The most recent research developments in the photosynthetic light harvesting complexes are thoroughly discussed. The theoretical background related to the spectral density, quantum coherence and density functional theory (DFT) has been elaborated.Further, details about the transfer and excitation of energy in different sites of the FMO complex along with other vital photosynthetic light harvesting complexes have also been provided. In particular, we will review recent results on spectral density, quantum coherence, quantum entanglement and excitonic energies of different pigments in the light harvesting complexes. We will also discuss the issues pertinent to the highest occupied orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupiedorbital (LUMO) energies for all the bacteriochlorophyll utilizing the time-dependent DFT. These results would be helpful in studying the excitonic dynamics of the light harvesting complexes among different applications. Finally, we conclude this review by providing the current and potential applications in environmental science, energy, health and medicine, where such mathematical and computational studies of the photosynthesis and the light harvesting complexes can be readily integrated.
  • 4.3K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Capillary-Driven Flow Microfluidics
Point-of-care (POC) or near-patient testing allows clinicians to accurately achieve real-time diagnostic results performed at or near to the patient site. The outlook of POC devices is to provide quicker analyses that can lead to well-informed clinical decisions and hence improve the health of patients at the point-of-need. Microfluidics plays an important role in the development of POC devices. However, requirements of handling expertise, pumping systems and complex fluidic controls make the technology unaffordable to the current healthcare systems in the world. In recent years, capillary-driven flow microfluidics has emerged as an attractive microfluidic-based technology to overcome these limitations by offering robust, cost-effective and simple-to-operate devices. The internal wall of the microchannels can be pre-coated with reagents, and by merely dipping the device into the patient sample, the sample can be loaded into the microchannel driven by capillary forces and can be detected via handheld or smartphone-based detectors. The capabilities of capillary-driven flow devices have not been fully exploited in developing POC diagnostics, especially for antimicrobial resistance studies in clinical settings. The purpose of this review is to open up this field of microfluidics to the ever-expanding microfluidic-based scientific community.
  • 4.3K
  • 24 Jul 2020
Topic Review
Nematode Identification
Nematodes are non-segmented roundworms evenly distributed with various habitats ranging to approximately every ecological extremity. These are the least studied organisms despite being the most diversified group. Nematodes are the most critical equilibrium-maintaining factors, having implications on the yield and health of plants as well as well-being of animals. As a result of the lack of precise taxonomic features, nematode taxonomy remains uncertain. Morphology-based identification has proved inefficacious in identifying and exploring the diversity of nematodes, as there are insufficient morphological variations. Different molecular and new evolving methodologies have been employed to augment morphology-based approaches and bypass these difficulties with varying effectiveness. These identification techniques vary from molecular-based targeting DNA or protein-based targeting amino acid sequences to methods for image processing. High-throughput approaches such as next-generation sequencing have also been added to this league. These alternative approaches have helped to classify nematodes and enhanced the base for increased diversity and phylogeny of nematodes, thus helping to formulate increasingly more nematode bases for use as model organisms to study different hot topics about human well-being.
  • 4.2K
  • 12 Jul 2022
Topic Review
Development of Therapeutic Monoclonal Antibodies
We provide an overview of the challenges and advancements in the development of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and antibody products.
  • 4.2K
  • 21 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Synechocystis sp.: A Model Microorganism
Synechocystis sp. is a unicellular, spherical, non-nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium with 0.7–8 µm in diameter and no or fine and colorless mucilage layer . The cell envelop of Synechocystis sp. contains the outer membrane, a peptidoglycan layer, and cytoplasmic membrane. The thylakoid membranes, derived from the cytoplasmic membrane, cover the peripheral region of the cell . From cyanobacteria to higher plants, thylakoid membranes are the site of photosynthesis converged near the cytoplasmic membrane. Thylakoid centers, fibrous coated cylindrical structures, 40–50 nm in diameter and 50–1000 nm in length, establish and maintain thylakoid membrane organization
  • 4.1K
  • 15 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Food Waste Used for the Cultivation of Mushroom
Pleurotus ostreatus (P. ostreatus) is considered a high-quality food, rich in proteins and bioactive compounds important for maintaining human health. Lately, a commonly used substrate for oyster mushroom cultivation—wheat straw, is more often replaced by alternative cellulose substrates originated from the agricultural and food industry. Utilization of wastes for mushroom cultivation has its added value: sustainable food waste management, production of high-quality food from low quality waste, as well as solving environmental, economic and global issues.
  • 4.0K
  • 15 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Wearable Stretch Sensors
Wearable sensors are beneficial for continuous health monitoring, movement analysis, rehabilitation, evaluation of human performance. Wearable stretch sensors are increasingly being used for human movement monitoring. The content presented provides a review of wearable stretch sensors as well the design, development and validation of a wearable soft-robotic-stretch sensors. 
  • 4.0K
  • 25 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Detection of Beta-Glucan
This entry provides a comprehensive review of the current literature about biological properties and available methods for the detection of beta-glucans. It shares the experience of the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory with the detection of beta-glucans in nanotechnology-based drug products. This entry summarizes and discusses five different approaches currently applied for the data interpretation of beta-glucan tests with respect to the acceptability (or lack thereof) of the beta-glucan levels in pharmaceutical products.
  • 4.0K
  • 03 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Serratiopeptidase
Microbial products have been used for the treatment of different diseases for many centuries. The serratiopeptidase enzyme provides a new hope for COVID-19-infected patients. Anti-inflammatory drugs are easy to obtain at minimal expenditure from microbial sources. Serratia sp. is identified as one of the most efficient bacteria produced from serratiopeptidase. Screening for new and efficient bacterial strains from different sources has been of interest. Serratiopeptidase remains the most well-known anti-inflammatory drug of choice. Serratiopeptidase is a cheaper and safer anti-inflammatory drug alternative to NSAIDs.
  • 3.9K
  • 01 Feb 2023
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