BACKGROUND Bt-maize is a transgenic variety of maize expressing the Cry toxin from Bacillus turingiensis. The potential accumulation of the relative effect of the transgenic modification and the cry toxin on the rhizobacterial communities of Bt-maize has been monitored over a period of four years. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The accumulative effects of the cultivation of this transgenic pl...

BACKGROUND Although outdoor cultivation systems have been widely used for mass production of microalgae at a relatively low cost, there are still limited efforts on outdoor cultivation of carbohydrate-rich microalgae that were further used as feedstock for fermentative bioethanol production. In particular, the effects of seasonal changes on cell growth, CO2 fixation, and carbohydrate production...

Background For industrial pharmaceutical protein production fast growing, high producing and robust cell lines are required. To select more pH shift permissive and fast growing sub-populations, the CHO DP-12 (ATCC clone #1934) cell line, an anti-IL8 antibody producing CHO K1 (DHFR) clone, was continuously subcultured at high viability (>90 %) for more than four hundred days in shaking flasks us...

BACKGROUND Investigation of basic chronic inflammatory mechanisms and development of new therapeutics targeting the respiratory tract requires appropriate testing systems, including those to monitor long- persistence. Human precision-cut lung slices (PCLS) have been demonstrated to mimic the human respiratory tract and have potential of an alternative, ex-vivo system to replace or augment in-vi...

Clarke, R.C. 1995. Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) Cultivation in the Tai'an District of Shandong Province, Peoples Republic of China. Journal of the International Hemp Association 2(2): 57, 60-65. This paper summarizes the history of hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) cultivation and traditional use in the Tai'an District of Shandong Province in the People's Republic of China, and investigates the cultivatio...

BACKGROUND As an alternative for economic biodiesel production, the microbial production of extracellular fatty acid from renewable resources is receiving more concerns recently, since the separation of fatty acid from microorganism cells is normally involved in a series of energy-intensive steps. Many attempts have been made to construct fatty acid producing strains by targeting genes in the f...

BACKGROUND Echinococcus granulosus, a zoonotic cestode parasite, causative agent of hydatid cyst is endemic in many parts of the world including the Middle East. Study on different aspects of this parasite is very important and valuable. However, working with adult worms which their habitat situated in the small intestine of canids, is dangerous and risky. Achieving such risky situation needs a...

BACKGROUND Tripeptide glutathione (gamma-glutamyl-L-cysteinyl-glycine) is the most abundant non-protein thiol that protects cells from metabolic and oxidative stresses and is widely used as medicine, food additives and in cosmetic industry. The methylotrophic yeast Hansenula polymorpha is regarded as a rich source of glutathione due to the role of this thiol in detoxifications of key intermedia...

Large scale microalgae cultivation actually represents a potential new source of renewable energy in the form of biofuel. Microalgae are individual plant cells which have the ability to photosynthesize and therefore utilize CO2, micronutrients and solar light to multiply and produce carbohydrates, lipids and proteins. Microalgae cultivation has several advantages over land grown crops. The majo...

The microalgae cultivation can be used as alternative sources of food, in agriculture, residual water treatment, and biofuels production. Semicontinuous cultivation is little studied but is more cost-effective than the discontinuous (batch) cultivation. In the semicontinuous cultivation, the microalga is maintained in better concentration of nutrients and the photoinhibition by excessive cell i...