Seaweeds survive in marine waters with high sulfate concentration compared to those living at freshwater habitats. The cell wall polymer of Gracilaria spp. which supplies more than 50% of the world agar is heavily sulfated. Since sulfation reduces the agar quality, it is interesting to investigate the effects of sulfate deprivation on the sulfate contents of seaweed and agar, as well as the met...

There are many large, easy-to-observe anseriform birds (ducks, geese, and swans) in northern Australia and New Guinea and they often gather in large numbers. Yet, the structure of their populations and their regional movements are poorly understood. Lack of understanding of population structure limits our capacity to understand source-sink dynamics relevant to their conservation or assess risks...

The number of structures of protein-protein complexes deposited to the Protein Data Bank is growing rapidly. These structures embed important information for predicting structures of new protein complexes. This motivated us to develop the PPISP method for predicting interface residues in protein-protein complexes. In PPISP, sequence profiles and solvent accessibility of spatially neighboring su...

alcoholic extracts of 8 different types of seaweeds from iran's persian gulf were tested for their antimalarial and acetylcholinesterase enzyme (ache) inhibitory activities for the first time. a modified ellman and ingkaninan method was used for measuring ache inhibitory activity in which galanthamine was used as the reference. the antimalarial assay was performed using microculture radioisotop...

Phycobiliproteins, the main polypeptidic components of the phycobilisomes (PBS), are biological macromolecules arranged in complex interaction systems to perform light harvesting and conduction. The optical properties of these systems can hardly be studied by conventional spectroscopic techniques. Furthermore this techniques also involve laborious chemical extraction methods. Photoacoustic (PA)...

A design of experiments was applied to evaluate different strategies to enhance the methane yield of macroalgae Gracilaria vermiculophylla. Biochemical Methane Potential (BMP) of G. vermiculophylla after physical pre-treatment (washing and maceration) reached 481±9 L CH4 kg(-1) VS, corresponding to a methane yield of 79±2%. No significant effects were achieved in the BMP after thermochemical pr...

Intensive aquaculture practices involve rearing fish at high densities. In these conditions, fish may be exposed to suboptimal dissolved O2 levels with an increased formation of reactive O2 species (ROS) in tissues. Seaweeds (SW) contain biologically active substances with efficient antioxidant capacities. This study evaluated the effects of dietary supplementation of heat-treated SW (5% Gracil...