Most of the hard-to-degrade keratin containing substrates like feathers or animal hairs is either discarded or incinerated, resulting in energy consumption and environmental pollution. Thus, an innovative eco-friendly method to deal with these wastes is urgently needed. Microbial degradation of keratin by keratinases has gained biotechnological interest in applications and represents a great op...

Currently, there are about 195 nations in the world, with a population of 7.8 billion. This much higher directly influences food demand. Due to this interlink massive amount waste has been collected from meat industries; especially poultry plays major role by discharging feathers into dumps. There 8.5 billion tons that wasted every year which lead high global environmental risk and cause differ...

BACKGROUND Photodynamic treatment (PDT) refers to a treatment with light-activated agents (photosensitizers) in combination with visible light and molecular oxygen. Recently, we have demonstrated that the porphyrins, 5,10,15-tris(4-methylpyridinium)-20-phenyl-[21H,23H]-porphine trichloride (Sylsens B) and deuteroporphyrin monomethylester (DP mme) are excellent photosensitizers to be used agains...

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of intense pulsed light (IPL) on Trichophyton rubrum and investigate its mechanism of action. Methods: The viability of fungi treated with IPL alone and with IPL combined with an NADPH oxidase inhibitor (DPI) pretreatment was determined by MTT assays. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) were quantified with a DCFH-DA fluorescent probe. Malondialdehyde (MDA) cont...

The prion agent is notoriously resistant to common proteases and conventional sterilisation procedures. The current methods known to destroy prion infectivity such as incineration, alkaline and thermal hydrolysis are harsh, destructive, environmentally polluting and potentially hazardous, thus limit their applications for decontamination of delicate medical and laboratory devices, remediation o...

Keratinolytic microorganisms have great importance in feather waste degradation and its use for improvement of livestock feed and production of protein hydrolysates. Bacillus altitudinis GVC11, a novel, raw chicken feather degrading bacterium, previously isolated and identified by morphological, biochemical and 16s rDNA sequencing in our laboratory, was used in the present study. It was grown i...

The keratinase (kerA) gene from Bacillus licheniformis PWD-1 was expressed and purified in insect cells. First, the sequence encoding Ker-His-Flag was designed based on the amino acid sequence of the protein and peptide and codon optimization in order to ensure the high expression in insect cells. In the next step, the synthetic DNA was inserted into the pUC57 vector and then sub-cloned in the ...