Plants have evolved a vast chemical cornucopia to support their sessile lifestyles. Man has exploited this natural resource since Neolithic times and currently plant-derived chemicals are exploited for a myriad of applications. However, plant sources of most high-value natural products (NPs) are not domesticated and therefore their production cannot be undertaken on an agricultural scale. Furth...

The present study deals with the batch and fed-batch mass production of Steinernema carpocapsae. S. carpocapsae is an entomoparasitic nematode that is used as a biological control agent of soil-borne crop insect pests. The ability and efficiency of fed-batch culture process was successful through the utilization of the nematode’s bacterial symbiont Xenorhabdus nematophila. Results from the fed-...

A blood sample from a patient who returned from Algeria with a fever inoculated on human embryonic lung fibroblasts by the shell vial cell culture technique led to the recovery of Rickettsia prowazekii. The last clinical strain was isolated 30 years ago. Shell vial cell culture is a versatile method that could replace the classic animal and/or embryonated egg inoculation.

AIM To analyse the effects of hypoxia-reoxygenation on the development of rat embryos during early stages of gestation in vitro. METHODS Whole embryo culture techniques were used to culture Wistar rat embryos under a range of gassing regimes, some of which included periods of mild hypoxia. After the termination of cultures, embryos were morphologically examined and assessed, and their protein...