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Chitin, next to cellulose, is by far the most common biopolymer found in nature which is relatively resistant to degradation. Chitinolytic microorganisms can break glycosidic bonds in chitin to oli...

The aim of this study was to optimize the culture conditions for production, recovery and characterization of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) from potential Bacillus cereus strain BNPI-92. Cost effective carbon sources such as crude oil (CO), rice bran (RB), sugar cane molasses (SCM) and wheat bran (WB) were evaluated for PHA production using the isolate. Higher cell dry weight (CDW) (g/L), PHA concentration (P conc.) (g/L) PHA contents (PC) (%) and PHA synthesis rate (PSR) were obtained from Glucose (60.67% w/v) as a carbon source at 37 °C and pH 7 using Taguchi DOE methods. The polymer was characterized by FTIR and its functional groups (C=O) (1719.41 cm−1 wavenumber) was a characteristic feature of PHB polymer. For 1HNMR, signals of methyne (CH) (5.28 ppm), methylene (-CH2-) (2.45 ppm) and methyl (CH3) (1.27 ppm) and copolymers were predicted. Copolymers such as P (3HB-co-3 HV) and P(3HB-co-3HHX) i.e. characteristic feature of PHB were obtained from a sample of glucose, WB, and RB, respectively. XRD pattern also confirmed the presence of PHA. The major compounds obtained from GC/MS analysis of the polymer recovered from the isolate BNP-92 were 2-butenoic acid, methyl ester (8.6%), ethyl cyclopropanecarboxylate (45.99%), 1-Undecanol (10.18%) which corresponds to and have produced from PHA after thermal degradation.

Nowadays the conventional plastic wastes are very challenging to environments and its production cost also creates an economic crisis due to petrochemical-based plastic. In order to solve this problem, the current studies were aimed at screening and characterizing these PHA producing isolates and evaluating the suitability of some carbon source for newly screened PHA producing isolates. Some carbon sources such as D-fructose, glucose, molasses, D-ribose and sucrose were evaluated for PHA production. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. The 16SrRNA gene sequence of these isolates was performed. This newly isolated taxa was related to Bacillus species. It was designed as Bacillus sp. LPPI-18 and affiliated Bacillus cereus ATCC 14577T (AE01687) (99.10%). Paenibacillus sp. 172 (AF273740.1) was used as an out-group. Bacillus sp. LPPI-18 is a gram-positive, rod-shaped, endospore former, and citrate test positive. This isolate showed positive for amylase, catalase, pectinase, and protease test. They produced intracellular PHA granules when this isolate was stained with Sudan Black B (SBB) and Nile Blue A (NBA) preliminary and specific staining dyes, respectively. Both Temperature and pH used to affect PHA productivity. Bacteria are able to reserve PHA in the form of granules during stress conditions. This isolate produces only when supplied with carbon sources. More PHA contents (PCs) were obtained from glucose, molasses, and D-fructose. In this regard, the maximum mean value of PC was obtained from glucose (40.55±0.7%) and the minimum was obtained from D-Ribose (12.4±1.4%). Great variations (p≤0.05) of PCs were observed among glucose & sucrose, molasses & sucrose and D-fructose & sucrose carbon sources for PHA productivity (PP) of Cell Dry Weight (CDW) g/L. After extraction, PHA film was produced for this typical isolate using glucose as a sole carbon source. Fourier transform infrared spectrum was performed for this isolate and showed the feature of polyester at 1719.64 to 1721.16 wavelength for these extracted samples. The peak of fingerprinting (band of carboxylic acid group) at this wave-length is a characteristic feature of PHB and corresponds to the ester functional group (C=O).

This study reports the whole-genome sequencing and sequence analysis of a bacterial isolate Brevibacterium casei strain LS14, isolated from Loktak Lake, Imphal, India. The de novo assembled genome reported in this paper featured a size of 3,809,532 bp, has GC content of 68% and contains 3602 genomic features, including 3551 protein-coding genes, 46 tRNA and 5rRNA. A biosurfactant biosynthesis gene cluster in the genome of the isolated strain was identified using AntiSMASH online tool V3.0.5 and KAAS (KEGG Automatic Annotation Server). The presence of biosurfactant was demonstrated by drop collapse, oil displacement and emulsification index. Subsequent chemical characterization using FTIR and LC–MS analyses revealed surfactin and terpene containing biosurfactant moieties. Also, the presence of genes involved in terpenoid synthesis pathway in the genome sequence may account for biosurfactant terpenoid backbone, but genes for later-stage conversion of terpenoid to biosurfactant were not ascertained.

Polysaccharides are nontoxic, biodegradable, and natural carbohydrate polymers virtually produced by almost all microbes, covering the surface of the cell and serve as the intracellular energy stores, and play a vital aspect in many biological pathways such as response to the infection, signal transduction, adhesion, and acts as a buffer against changing environments. They are mostly present as extracellular capsules, slime creations, or sheaths. Bioactive polysaccharides were proven to show many immune modulatory and health-promoting effects in diseases like cancer and some inflammatory diseases. Thus, substantial research has been carried out on revealing the mechanism behind the biological activity by structural and functional analysis. Apart from their applications in the health sectors, these polysaccharides have huge pertinence in the food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical industries as thickeners, probiotics, bioadhesives, and gelling agents. In environmental sectors, they are used as biosorbent and bioflocculant. In this chapter, several production processes of EPSs using a cost-effective biomass, commercial applications of the EPSs, and general mechanisms of EPS production are briefly described.

Pigments are compounds capable of absorbing light and are responsible for displaying a specific color. Several ores, insects, plants, microbes are the source of the natural pigments. However, microorganisms have enormous potential in producing pigments due to its stability, availability, productivity, easy downstream processing, and yield. Pigments like melanins, quinines melanins, flavins, violacein, monascins, and carotenoids have been produced by microorganisms. Microbial pigments have gained more interest in present research not just due to their utilization as colorants in industries like food, plastic, textile, paint, printing, and paper, but it also possess several biological properties such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticancer, and various other bio-pharmacological activities that have been discussed in this chapter. This chapter will lead to the exploration of microorganisms producing pigments, their application in various fields as well as their ultimatums, and future prospective for various applications.

Optimization of media composition for microbial growth is crucial particularly in industrial processes to obtain the desired end product. The waste from sea food industries includes the non-edible parts of shrimp, crabs and prawns which are rich in chitin as the major cause of pollution in coastal areas. Chitin degradation is carried out chemically. It can be degraded biologically also, particularly using microorganisms resulting in chitooligosaccahrides and the monomer N-acetylglucosamine. N-acetyl glucosamine and related chitooligosaccahrides have various applications such as treatment of cancer and metastasis, treatment of autoimmune reactions, as food supplements and increased plant stress tolerance against salinity and heavy metals. Thus, chitin waste can be efficiently degraded biologically using microorganisms to produce such useful products. Conventional methods such as One factor at a time (OFAT) are more time consuming and costly to address the problem. The current work focuses on the development of an experimental design to ascertain parameters optimized for chitin degradation by a Streptomyces chilikensis to produce various chitooligosaccharides. More than one factor was taken at a time to carry out the experiments and the data were fit into Taguchi Design to determine the contribution of the most important factors responsible for the production of the desired end product that is NAG and other chitooligosaccaharides. Highest NAG production (3741 μM/reaction) was observed in a media that contains 0.5% Raffinose (w/v), 0.5% peptone (w/v), 2.5% NaCl at pH 11.

Chitin is one of the most abundant biopolymers present in the environment. Chitosan being its major derivative can be obtained by hydrolysis of chitin, especially by microbial degradation. Estimation of resulting chitosan produced by chitin degradation is crucial to the process. Usefulness of the method of Badawy (Badawy, 2012) for estimation of chitosan is limited by interference resulting from susceptibility to variation in the pH of the sample and thiobarbituric acid. This work presents an improvement of the method proposed by Badawy for colorimetric determination of chitosan by using 3, 5-Dinitrosalicylic acid (DNSA) reagent instead of thiobarbituric acid, after one step depolymerization and deamination of chitosan with sodium nitrite (NaNO2). Eventually colorimetric estimation was carried out at 540 nm. With the use of DNSA reagent, the limitation of thiobarbituric acid are overcome. This method is easy, cost effective, and sensitive for quantitative determination of chitosan. This new improved method was applied for evaluation and quantification of chitosan produced by microbial degradation of chitin waste by different novel Streptomyces strains.

The present study focuses on the preparation of N-acetyl chitooligosaccharides (N-AcCOS) by microbial degradation of colloidal chitin using novel Streptomyces chilikensis strain RC1830 instead of using chitinolytic enzymes extracted from microorganisms as reported earlier. Statistical optimization of the factors such as pH, media, carbon source, nitrogen source, salt concentration, surfactants and metal ions on production of N-AcCOS by the strain RC1830 at shake flask level and subsequent validation of the optimized model at bench scale bioreactor level were conducted. The product obtained was characterized by Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry (ESI-MS). N-AcCOS obtained, was evaluated for in vitro anti-radical, anti-inflammatory, anti-proliferative activity and its role in cell migration. The results showed that the N-AcCOS extract has free radical scavenging and anti-inflammatory activities and down regulation of proliferation of human breast cancer cells in a dose dependent manner. Cell migration assay showed that N-AcCOS extract promoted effective migration of HEK293 cell at a concentration of 750 μg/mL and 1000 μg/mL.

Graphical abstract, An extracellular thermo-alkali stable chitinase was obtained from Streptomyces chilikensis RC1830, a novel actinobacterial strain isolated from the sediments of Chilika lake, India. Purification of the enzyme was carried out by concentrating the enzyme with centrifugal device followed by chromatographic separation by DEAE Sepharose ion exchange resin.The molecular weight of the enzyme was 10.5 kDa as determined by SDS-PAGE. The optimum pH and temperature for the partially purified chitinase was pH 7 and 60 °C. The chitinase showed 40% activity at pH 11 after 24 h exposure at room temperature. The chitinase exhibited Km and Vmax values are 0.02 mM and 3.184 mol/min/mg of enzyme respectively. The 6 residue N-terminal sequence of the enzyme was not found similar to any of the reported chitinase enzyme. Based on the SDS PAGE, zymogram analysis, activity assays and other characteristics, it is proposed that the purified enzyme from S.chilikensis RC1830 is a chitinase.

moderately halophilic spore forming, motile, Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterial strain designated as KGW1T was isolated from water sample of Chilika Lake and characterized taxonomically using polyphasic approach. The strain grew in the presence of 0-25% (w/v) NaCl in marine salt agar media, hydrolyzes casein, and gelatin and shows presence of alkaline proteases. The major cell wall menaquinone was MK7 and major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C15:0 (44.89%), anteiso-C17:0 (6.18%), isoC15:0 (19.38%), and iso-C16:0 (7.39%). Several chemotaxonomic features conform the isolate be a member of genus Halobacillus. The isolate KGW1T contained A1γ meso-Dpm-direct type of peptidoglycan which is different from its phylogenetically closest neighbours. The 16S rRNA gene sequence based phylogenetic analysis also revealed the strain KGW1T was affiliated to the genus Halobacillus and sequence similarity between the isolated strain and the type strains of Halobacillus species were found closest to, H. dabanensis D-8 DSM 18199T (99.08%) and H. faecis IGA7-4 DSM 21559T (99.01%), H. trueperi SL-5 DSM 10404T (98.94%). The in silico DDH showed that the values in a range of 14.2-17.5% with the most closest strain H. dabanensis D-8 DSM 18199T and other type strains of the genus Halobacillus for which whole genome sequence is reported. DNA-DNA relatedness between strain KGW1T and the closest type strain Halobacillus trueperi DSM 10404T was 11.75% (± 1.15). The draft genome sequence includes 3,683,819 bases and comprises of 3898 predicted coding sequences with a G + C content of 46.98%. Thus, the significant distinctiveness supported by phenotypic and genotypic data with its closest neighbors and other closely related species confirm the strain KGW1T to be classified as a novel species within the genus Halobacillus, for which the name Halobacillus marinus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is KGW1T (= DSM 29522 = JCM 30443).

Background: One of the risk factors for the development of coronary heart disease is high low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels. National Cholesterol Education Program ATP III guidelines suggest drug therapy to be considered at LDL-cholesterol levels >130 mg/dl. This makes accurate reporting of LDL cholesterol crucial in the management of Coronary heart disease. Estimation of LDL cholesterol by direct LDL method is accurate, but it is expensive. Hence, We compared Friedewald's calculated LDL values with direct LDL values. Aim: To evaluate the correlation of Friedewalds calculated LDL with direct LDL method. Materials and Methods: We compared LDL cholesterol measured by Friedewald's formula with direct LDL method in 248 samples between the age group of 20-70 years. Paired t-test was used to test the difference in LDL concentration obtained by a direct method and Friedewald's formula. The level of significance was taken as P < 0.05. Pearsons correlation formula was used to test the correlation between direct LDL values with Friedewald's formula. Results: There was no significant difference between the direct LDL values when compared to calculated LDL by Friedewalds formula (P = 0.140). Pearson correlation showed there exists good correlation between direct LDL versus Friedewalds formula (correlation coefficient = 0.98). The correlation between direct LDL versus Friedewalds calculated LDL was best at triglycerides values between 101 and 200 mg/dl. Conclusion: This study indicates calculated LDL by Friedewalds equation can be used instead of direct LDL in patients who cannot afford direct LDL method.

Introduction Previous studies indicate a higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome in psoriatic patients. This study aimed to investigate the association of metabolic syndrome and its components with psoriasis. It also studied the relation between presence of metabolic syndrome and disease duration in psoriasis patients. Materials and methods This was a hospital-based, case-control study conducted with 30 clinically diagnosed patients of chronic plaque psoriasis and 30 age- and sex-matched control subjects. Height, weight, BMI, blood pressure and waist circumference were assessed in all the subjects. Fasting levels of serum glucose, serum triglycerides and serum HDL were estimated by automated clinical chemistry analyser. Metabolic syndrome was diagnosed by the presence of at least 3 criteria of NCEP ATP III with Asian modification for waist circumference. Results Metabolic syndrome was more common in psoriatic patients than in controls but the difference was statistically insignificant (60% vs. 40%, p-value=0.12). The psoriasis group had a higher prevalence of elevated blood glucose levels and higher waist circumference compared to controls. Psoriasis patients had a higher prevalence of high triglyceride levels than controls, the difference being statistically insignificant (40% vs. 30%, p-value = 0.41). The prevalence of low HDL levels was significantly higher in cases compared to controls (86.7% vs. 60%, p-value = 0.02). There was no relation between presence of metabolic syndrome and duration of psoriasis. Conclusion Our findings suggest that metabolic syndrome as well as dyslipidaemia is commoner in psoriasis patients. This underlines the need for screening of all psoriasis patients for early diagnosis and treatment of associated metabolic syndrome to reduce the high burden of morbidity and mortality.

Introduction: Electrolyte abnormalities are one of the common causes of morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. The turnaround time for electrolyte reporting should be as low as possible. Electrolytes are measured conventionally in serum obtained from venous blood by electrolyte analyser which takes 20 to 30 min. Point of care analysers are now available where in electrolytes can be measured in arterial blood within 5 min. This study was done to study the agreement of arterial sodium and arterial potassium with venous sodium and venous potassium levels. Materials and Methods: Venous sodium and venous potassium levels and arterial sodium and arterial potassium levels were analysed on 206 patient samples admitted to Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The venous values were compared with the arterial values for correlation. Venous sodium was compared with arterial sodium by spearman correlation. Venous potassium was compared with arterial potassium by pearson correlation. Results: The mean value of arterial sodium was 134 and venous sodium was 137. The mean value of arterial potassium was 3.6 and venous potassium was 4.1. The correlation coefficient obtained for sodium was 0.787 and correlation coefficient obtained for potassium was 0.701. There was positive correlation of arterial sodium and arterial potassium with venous sodium and venous potassium indicating agreement between the parameters. Conclusion: Arterial sodium and arterial potassium can be used instead of venous sodium and venous potassium levels in management of critically ill patients.

Factitious biochemical reports result in the misguiding of clinicians, unnecessary retesting, wrong diagnoses and incorrect treatments. A vigilant biochemist identifies these factitious biochemical reports and alerts the clinician regarding the proper interpretation of the biochemical reports, thus preventing a misdiagnosis and an incorrect treatment. We are presenting a case report of a multiple myeloma patient who presented with factitious biochemical reports which were caused due to paraproteinaemia. In the present case, the patient presented with an underestimation of urea and creatinine, an underestimation of sodium, low albumin levels and high phosphate levels. On repeating the same tests after dilutions and deproteinizing, the effects of the paraproteins on the above mentioned tests were reduced. Thus, from the observations of our study, we suggest that the interference by paraproteinaemia can be reduced by analyzing the biochemical parameters after dilution and deproteinization.