Biotechnology
Chapters
« previous | page 2 of 5 pages | next »Enzyme Applications in Leather Processing: Current Scenario and Future Outlook
Palanisamy Thanikaivelan, Jonnalagadda Raghava Rao, Balachandran Unni Nair and Thirumalachari Ramasami
Global leather industry is undergoing paradigm shift from chemical to bio‑based leather making to meet the growing environmental challenges. A short appraisal on the use of enzymes in current leather processing has been presented. Although enzymes find use in many areas of leather processing, ...
Enzyme Catalysis in Fine Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries
Ganapati D. Yadav, Ashwini D. Sajgure and Shrikant B. Dhoot
Biotechnology is being increasingly adopted by several chemical companies to improve manufacturing sustainability and profitability as regards energy consumption and feed stock access as well as the production of high-value chemicals.1,2 Industrial biotranformations generally center around natural c...
Epo Delivery by Genetically Engineered C2C12 Myoblasts Immobilized in Microcapsules
Ainhoa Murua, Gorka Orive, Rosa Ma Hernández and José Luis Pedraz
Over the last half century, the use of erythropoietin (Epo) in the management of malignancies has been extensively studied. Originally viewed as the renal hormone responsible for red blood cell production, many recent in vivo and clinical approaches demonstrate that various tissues locally produce E...
Fluorescent Nanoparticle for Bacteria and DNA Detection
Wenjun Zhao, Lin Wang and Weihong Tan
Using bioconjugated dye-doped silica nanoparticles (NPs), we have developed a bioassay for the accurate determination of a single bacterial cell within 20 minutes without any signal amplification or sample enrichment. The antibody-conjugated NPs can specifically and quantitatively detect bacteria, s...
Food Manufacture
Katalin Belafi-Bako
A summary on the role and functions of enzymes and enzyme mixtures in food processing technologies (dairy and meat industry, fish processing, baking, starch and sugar industry, production of beverages and fruit juices, and fat and oil processing), in biosynthesis of food additives (surfactants, flav...
Genetic Immunization: Bacteria as DNA Vaccine Delivery Vehicles
Pablo Daniel Becker, Miriam Noerder and Carlos Alberto Guzmán
The so‑called DNA vaccination represents one of the most notable tools under development in the field of vaccinology. The concept of administering the gene coding for any given protective antigen and make responsible vaccinee’s own cells to produce the protein appeals as too simple to be tru...
Hydrogen Fuel Production by Transgenic Microalgae
Anastasios Melis, Michael Seibert and Maria L. Ghirardi
This chapter summarizes the state-of-art in the field of green algal H2-production and examines physiological and genetic engineering approaches by which to improve the hydrogen metabolism characteristics of these microalgae. Included in this chapter are emerging topics pertaining to the application...
Immune Interventions of Human Diseases through Toll-Like Receptors
Cevayir Coban, Ken J. Ishii and Shizuo Akira
Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are the immune sensors for infections, triggering robust innate immune activation followed by protective adaptive immunity against various infectious diseases. Recent evidence, however, has suggested that TLRs are involved in the pathogenesis of many diseases, including no...
Immune Modulators with Defined Molecular Targets: Cornerstone to Optimize Rational Vaccine Design
Thomas Ebensen and Carlos A. Guzmán
Vaccination remains the most valuable tool for preventing infectious diseases. However, the performance of many existing vaccines should be improved and there are diseases for which vaccines are still not available. The use of well‑defined antigens for the generation of subunit vaccines has le...
Imprinted Polymers in Capillary Electrophoresis and Capillary Electrochromatography
Alessandra Bossi, Pier Giorgio Righetti and Staffan Nilsson
The use of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) as sorbents in capillary electrophoresis (CE) and capillary electrochromatography (CEC) is an attractive way to combine the high selectivity offered by MIPs with the high separation efficiency (106 theoretical plates) and short time of analysis (a ...
Improvement of Insect Pathogens as Insecticides through Genetic Engineering
Brian A. Federici, Bryony C. Bonning and Raymond J. St. Leger
Viruses and microorganisms that cause disease in insects have been under evaluation as insecticides for more than a century. Only Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) has been a commercial success and even so it still represents less than 1% of insecticide usage worldwide. The development of recombinant DNA ...
In the Grip of Algal Genomics
Arthur R. Grossman
Algae are dominant primary producers on the Earth and have a major impact on global \r\n productivity and biogeochemical cycling. There are still few algal genomes that have \r\n been completely characterized, and resources directed toward algal genomic sequencing are limited. However, it is also be...
In Vivo Remote Control of Bacterial Vectors for Prophylaxis and Therapy
Holger Loessner and Siegfried Weiss
The use of live attenuated bacteria as prophylactic vaccines has a proven track record in human and veterinary medical praxis. In addition, bacteria‑based medicines are currently developed for the treatment of diseases such as cancer, gene deficiencies, autoimmunity and allergy. Treatment of t...
Influence of Codon Bias on the Expression of Foreign Genes in Microalgae
Markus Heitzer, Almut Eckert, Markus Fuhrmann and Christoph Griesbeck
The expression of functional proteins in heterologous hosts is a core technique of modern biotechnology. The transfer to a suitable expression system is not always achieved easily because of several reasons: genes from different origins might contain codons that are rarely used in the desired host o...
Innovative Approaches to Develop Prophylactic and Therapeutic Vaccines against HIV/AIDS
Aurelio Cafaro, Iole Macchia , Maria Teresa Maggiorella, Fausto Titti and Barbara Ensoli
The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) emerged in the human population in the summer of 1981. According to the latest United Nations estimates, worldwide over 33 million people are infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the prevalence rates continue to rise globally. To control ...
Insertional Mutagenesis as a Tool to Study Genes/Functions in Chlamydomonas
Aurora Galván, David Gonzalez-Ballester, Emilio Fernandez and Emilio Fernández
The unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has emerged during the last decades as a model system to understand gene functions, many of them shared by bacteria, fungi, plants, animals and humans. A powerful resource for the research community is the availability of complete collections of stable ...
Integrated DNA Biochips: Past, Present and Future
Piotr Grodzinski, Robin Hui Liu and Abraham P. Lee
DNA biochip is becoming a widespread tool used in life science, drug screening and diagnostic applications due to its many benefits of miniaturization and integration. The term “DNA biochip” is used broadly and includes various technologies: DNA microarrays, microfluidics/Lab‑on‑a...
Integrated Microfluidic CustomArray™ Biochips for Gene Expression and Genotyping Analysis
Robin Hui Liu, Mike Lodes, H. Sho Fuji, David Danley, Andrew McShea and Andrew McShea
DNA microarray technology has become one of the most promising analytical tools in molecular biology. It has been widely used for studying mRNA levels and examining gene expression in biological samples. It is becoming a powerful tool in the arena of diagnostics and personalized medicine. In this ch...
Integrated Molecular Analyses of Biological Samples on a Bead‑Based Microarray Platform
Joanne M. Yeakley, Daniel A. Peiffer, Marina Bibikova, Tim McDaniel, Kevin L. Gunderson, Richard Shen, Bahram G. Kermani, Lixin Zhou, Eugene Chudin, Shawn C. Baker, Kenneth M. Kuhn, Frank Steemers, Mark Hansen, Michael Graige , Celeste McBride, Steven Barnard, Bob Kain, David Barker and Jian-Bing Fan
Molecular analyses of biological samples have traditionally been pursued in parallel, with those researchers studying genetic diversity having few technical approaches in common with those studying gene expression. Increasingly, scientists recognize the importance of integrating analytical technolog...
Integrated Nucleic Acid Analysis in Parallel Matrix Architecture
Jong Wook Hong
With the advent of the postgenomic era, accurate and fast nucleic analyses are becoming more important with reasonable running costs. Nucleic acids carry precious information important for the understanding of many complex biological processes critical for diagnosis and therapy of a wide range of di...
Integrated Plastic Microfluidic Devices for Bacterial Detection
Z. Hugh Fan and Antonio J. Ricco
This chapter describes integrated plastic microfluidic devices designed and fabricated for bacterial detection and identification. The devices, made from poly(cyclic olefin), contain components for DNA amplification, microfluidic valving, sample injection, on‑column labeling and separation. DN...
Integrating Sample Processing and Detection with Microchip Capillary Electrophoresis of DNA
Adam T. Woolley
DNA is the storage medium for inherited information in living systems and thus, techniques for nucleic acid analysis are of great importance. Integrated microchip instrumentation for rapid separation of DNA by capillary electrophoresis (CE) has emerged as an especially promising approach for assayin...
Introduction to Use of Complex Enzyme Mixtures
Sanjoy K. Bhattacharya
Biocatalysts produce substances that are often advantageous compared to traditional methods. They also help synthesize new compounds. To achieve increased or novel production, mutant organisms, tailored enzymes as well as novel combinations of enzymes in reactors are being used and the sphere applic...
Liposomes in Biology and Medicine
Reto A. Schwendener
Drug delivery systems (DDS) have become important tools for the specific delivery of a large number of drug molecules. Since their discovery in the 1960s liposomes were recognized as models to study biological membranes and as versatile DDS of both hydrophilic and lipophilic molecules. Liposomes—n...
Magnetic Nanoparticle Assisted Molecular MR Imaging
Young-wook Jun, Jung-tak Jang and Jinwoo Cheon
Magnetic nanoparticles exhibit unique nanoscale properties of superparamagnetism and have the potential to be utilized as excellent probes for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Especially, clinically benign iron oxide nanoparticles provide good MR probing capability and some of them are currently av...
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