Marine endophytic fungi isolated from Red Sea organisms were screened for the production of dextranase enzyme. The most potent isolate was from the Red Sea sponge Callyspongia spp. and was selected for identification. The18S rRNA amplification for phylogenetic study revealed that the isolate was highly related to Aspergillus flocculosus strain NRRL 5224 by 99 %. Medium composition and culture c...

α-fetoprotein (AFP) is an early serum growth factor in foetal embryonic development and hepatic oncogenesis. A growing number of investigations of AFP as a tumour-specific biomarker have concluded that AFP is an important target for cancer treatment. AFP also plays an immunomodulatory role in the treatment of several autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, myasthe...

The disposal and treatment of wastes generated in the leather industry has been the focus of several studies around the world. They intend to meet environmental legislation and make the process environmentally and economically viable. The anaerobic digestion process, which occurs in steps that involve acid and methane forming bacteria, can be an alternative since it turns the waste into renewab...

A new local strain of S. cerevisiae F-514, for ethanol production during hot summer season, using Egyptian sugar cane molasses was applied in Egyptian distillery factory. The inouluum was propagated through 300 L, 3 m(3), and 12 m(3) fermenters charged with diluted sugar cane molasses containing 4%-5% sugars. The yeast was applied in fermentation vessels 65 m(3) working volume to study the vary...

BACKGROUND Pleural infection is common, and has a >30% major morbidity and mortality-particularly when infection is caused by Gram-negative, Staphylococcus aureus or mixed aerobic pathogens. Standard pleural fluid culture is negative in ∼40% of cases. Culturing pleural fluid in blood culture bottles may increase microbial yield, and is cheap and easy to perform. OBJECTIVES To determine whethe...

Response surface methodology was employed to optimize the degradation conditions of AFB₁ by Rhodococcus erythropolis in liquid culture. The most important factors that influence the degradation, as identified by a two-level Plackett-Burman design with six variables, were temperature, pH, liquid volume, inoculum size, agitation speed and incubation time. Central composite design (CCD) and respon...

A human plasma (inoculum one) containing hepatitis C virus (HCV) was passaged through eight chimpanzees in three generations. Of 10 HCV clones propagated from it, 7 were different in respect to the hypervariable region of E2/NS1 glycoprotein and they were named clones A, B, C, etc. A chimpanzee received inoculum one, and clone A accounted for 7 of the 10 clones from his acute-phase plasma (inoc...

Sunflower oil cake (SuOC) is the solid by-product from the sunflower oil extraction process and an important pollutant waste because of its high organic content. For the anaerobic digestion of SuOC three different industrial reactors were compared as inoculum sources. This was done using a biochemical methane production (BMP) test. Inoculum I was a granular biomass from an industrial reactor tr...