Cultivated cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) produces carminic acid, a valuable red dye used to color textiles, cosmetics, and food. Extant native D. coccus is largely restricted to two populations in the Mexican and the Andean highlands, although the insect's ultimate center of domestication remains unclear. Moreover, due to Mexican D. coccus cultivation's near demise during the 19th century, the...

Finegoldia magna is a member of the normal human bacterial flora on the skin and other non-sterile body surfaces, but this anaerobic coccus is also an important opportunistic pathogen. SufA was the first F. magna proteinase to be isolated and characterized. Many bacterial pathogens interfere with different steps of blood coagulation, and here we describe how purified SufA efficiently and specif...

The domesticated carmine cochineal Dactylopius coccus (scale insect) has commercial value and has been used for more than 500 years for natural red pigment production. Besides the domesticated cochineal, other wild Dactylopius species such as Dactylopius opuntiae are found in the Americas, all feeding on nutrient poor sap from native cacti. To compensate nutritional deficiencies, many insects h...

Cochineal is the name of both crimson or carmine dye and the cochineal insect (Dactylopius coccus), a scale insect from which the dye is derived. There are other species in the genus Dactylopius which can be used to produce cochineal extract, but they are extremely difficult to distinguish from D. coccus, even for expert taxonomists, and the latter scientific name (and the use of the term "coch...

The clinical and bacteriological features of a case of endocarditis are described in which a Gram-positive coccus, presently designated Micrococcus sedentarius incertae sedis, was repeatedly isolated.