Serratia marcescens, a Gram-negative bacillus, was originally and solely considered a biological marker in the medicinal industry, due to its highly natural red pigment: Prodigiosin (Hejazi and Falkiner, 1997). The pigment has numerous roles within bacteria, which can be further translated into the pharmaceutical and medical domain. This bacterium naturally occurs in water, soil, on plants as well as in humans and animals (Khanafari et al, 2006), where it is deemed an opportunistic pathogen. S.marcescens is viable enough to flourish on standard media with the production of a pigment, which characteristically ranges from a red to a dark pink shade. Through its pathway of synthesis, Prodigiosin is formed as an alkaloid secondary metabolite with a linear tripyrrole chemical structure (figure 1), (Samrot et al, 2011). Secondary metabolites are natural products and also by-products of metabolism.(Vaishnav and Demain, 2011). The Biosynthesis of the pigment is a bifurcated process, formed from a mono and bipyrrole. These two precursors are synthesied independently and then constructed to produce Prodigiosin (Giri et al, 2004). Many beneficial qualities occur for S.marcescens upon the production of Prodigiosin. Prodigiosin offers protection to the bacterium, by removing accumulated toxins such as, amino acids. It also offers substantial protection against excessive UV light from sunlight; its antibiotic properties are also used to protect the bacterium. Prodigiosin can formulate into a biopigment, henceforth contribute to the production of important medicinal materials. It is a highly desirable molecule, as of its characteristic traits being; antibacterial, antimycotic, antimalarial, antitumour and also immunosuppressant. (Prad... ... middle of paper ... ...iosin from Serratia marcescens isolated from soil. BMC microbiology, 4 (1), p. 11 Casullo De Ara 'Ujo, H. W., Fukushima, K. and Takaki, G. M. C. 2010. Prodigiosin production by Serratia marcescens UCP 1549 using renewable-resources as a low cost substrate. Molecules, 15 (10), p. 6931-6940. Ryazantseva, I. N., Saakov, V. S., Andreyeva, I. N., Ogorodnikova, T. I. and Zuev, Y. F. 2012. Response of pigmented Serratia marcescens to the illumination. Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology, 106 p. 18-23 Venil, C. K., Velmurugan, p. and Lakshmanaperumalsamy, P. 2009. Genomic environment of cue R and cop A genes for prodigiosin biosynthesisby Serratia marcescens SB08. Romanian Biotechnological Letters, 14 (6), p. 4812-4819 Montaner, B. and Perez-Tomas, R. 2001. Prodigiosin-induced apoptosis in human colon cancer cells. Life sciences, 68 (17), p. 2025-2036.
The purpose of this study is to identify an unknown bacterium from a mixed culture, by conducting different biochemical tests. Bacteria are an integral part of our ecosystem. They can be found anywhere and identifying them becomes crucial to understanding their characteristics and their effects on other living things, especially humans. Biochemical testing helps us identify the microorganism present with great accuracy. The tests used in this experiment are rudimentary but are fundamental starting points for tests used in medical labs and helps students attain a better understanding of how tests are conducted in a real lab setting. The first step in this process is to use gram-staining technique to narrow down the unknown bacteria into one of the two big domains; gram-negative and gram-positive. Once the gram type is identified, biochemical tests are conducted to narrow down the specific bacterial species. These biochemical tests are process of elimination that relies on the bacteria’s ability to breakdown certain kinds of food sources, their respiratory abilities and other biochemical conditions found in nature.
Proteus mirabilis is part of the Enterobacteriaceae family. It is a small gram-negative bacillus and a facultative anaerobe. Proteus mirabilis is characterized by its swarming motility, its ability to ferment maltose, and its inability to ferment lactose. P. mirabilis has the ability to elongate itself and secrete a polysaccharide when in contact with solid surfaces, making it extremely motile on items such as medical equipment.
Kanamycin antibiotics is produced from a bacteria called Streptomyces kanamyceticus and is usually use in the form of kanamycin monosulphfate as its raw material. Kanamycin monosulphfate kill bacteria by blocking one of the ribosome that prevents the bacteria from building proteins it needs to survive and grow.
Neelam, S., Krishna, M., Semwal, B. C., Shravan, P., Kuldeep, S., & Deepak, S. (2012). PROGERIA: A REVIEW. International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Review and Research, 14(1), 44-49. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1018555014?accountid=1599
This biotechnology lab analyzes the effect of transferring genetic information through the alternation of bacterial gene in E. coli (Spilios, 2014). This alteration occurs through plasmid DNA transcribing the new genetic components into RNA, which will translate into an amino acid (Sadava et al., 2014). This newly transcribed amino acid is an enzyme that will give the transformed E. coli cells an antibiotic resistance, Beta-lactamase (Greenfield et al., 2009). The plasmid DNA of interest will be altered to become more resilient to the antibiotic ampicillin, since beta-lactamase could decompose the ampicillin. In addition to plasmid DNA, the bacteria contain other important features such as reporter gene. This reporter gene will act as an aid when observing the effect of the alteration, since this particular gene can be distinguished when a plasmid with foreign DNA is transferred from one to another (Spilios, 2014). Moreover, the reporter gene being used in this lab, Green Fluorescent Protein, is to determine gene resistance to ampicillin. GFP would be useful in this experiment, since it would glow when arabinose operon is present. Ampicillin is a derivative of penicillin that inhibits bacterial growth by interfering with the synthesis of bacterial cell walls. Since E. coli is gram negative, and ampicillin kills the gram-negative bacteria by synthesizing with the cell wall, E. coli should perish under no transformation. However, the ampicillin resistance gene is the enzyme Beta-lactamase, which is secreted by transformed cells into the surrounding medium where it destroys ampicillin (Dörr, 2010). In order to resist ampicillins, E.coli utilizes pGLO plasmid to protect the cell from ampicillin’s invasion. There are four components to...
As a species, Cyanobacteria are chemically diverse, and owe their bluish colour to the pigment phycocyanin, which is used to capture light for photosynthesis. Because they are able to photosynthesize, they are able to...
Betulinic acid– This is the chemical substance that can kill cancer cells. The studies also showed that it does not produce any harmful effect on healthy cells of the body.
...cial roles in modern medicine. But the emergence of microbial resistance has increasingly limited their effectiveness in the past two decades (Schmidt, 1994). The overuse of antibiotics in clinical practices and everyday life substances, such as antibacterial soap, has been found responsible for such resistance. Due to frequent mutations of microbes, researchers and scientists have to consider multiple strategies to combat microbes. As a society, we need to thrive to understand the effects of antibiotics and develop newer methods to contain antimicrobials. Furthermore, we need to emphasize the danger of unfinished antibiotics that could potentially lead to higher percentage of microbial resistance. Preventing and developing novel methods to impede the spread of antibiotic resistance is a way to keep today’s antibiotics effective and to sustain future generations.
...r is hard to cure due to its ability to metastasis and avoid apoptosis due to mutation occurs in the genes during mitosis, especially on oncogen and tumour suppressor gene. Oncogen contribute to cancer cells by encouraging cells to grow and divide excessively while tumour suppressor genes inhibit apoptosis. As all cells on Earth require oxygen, nutrients and the ability to remove waste products to survive and develop, it seems possible to develop anti-cancer drugs which will target at those blood vessels which supply nutrients to tumour cells. Even though this method is providing some promising results, there is no significant improvement in the overall survival of the organism in the long term. Nevertheless, the understanding of cellular basis of cancer cells gain from numerous researches have certainly help in developing new and effective treatment for cancer.
As an inducer of HIF-1 production, it’s been used to study the apoptotic effects in HepG2 cells.
The research of pigments has performed an important part in the junction of progress, genes, and developing chemistry. Pigmentation's application as a visible phenotypic marker has resulted in over 100 years of intense research of cover shade stresses in lab rats, thereby creating an impressive record of applicant genes and an knowing of the developing systems accountable for the phenotypic results.
Thus lipases are credible tools for the organic chemists. The widen applications of microbial lipases in biotechnology has necessitate the continued research and development of novel lipases with large substrate tolerance, and high stability (Momsia and Momsia
The first attempts to establish fermentative production of PHA happened 40 years ago, using stains of Ralstonia eutropha and Alcaligenes latus.
...e of a modern multidisciplinary discipline that could serve to arouse the interesting medicinal sciences. Increased interest in the study of natural products in drug development, as well as rapidly altering investigation strategies are the driving forces, modernizing the pharmacognosy. Pharmacognosy, now a day focuses on finding novel and unique molecules and revealing unknown targets by studying such molecules in nature. It is now well understood that pharmacognosy is one of several scientific disciplines that have an inimitable strategic position in connecting biology with chemistry and even medicine. New and improved strategies regarding the selection of organism selection, bioassays techniques, isolation procedures, and structure elucidation are constantly devoloped based on the latest advancements in pharmacognosy (Bruhn & Bohlin, 1997; Claeson & Bohlin, 1997).
Nester, E. W., Anderson, D. G., Roberrs, E. j., & Nester, M. T. (2007). Microbiology . New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies .