Disulfide-rich peptide venoms from animals such as snakes, spiders, scorpions, and certain marine snails represent one of nature's great diversity libraries of bioactive molecules. The various species of marine cone shells have alone been estimated to produce >50,000 distinct peptide venoms. These peptides have stimulated considerable interest because of their ability to potently alter the func...

Background: Hydrocarbons degradation is principally achieved by microorganisms in natural environments. The extent of hydrocarbons biodegradation is mainly conditioned by environmental factors and its success depends on the optimal condition for the crude oil degrading isolates. Objectives: The aims of the current study was to isolate and identify crude oil degrading bacterium from surface sed...

INTRODUCTION The acetogenin, annonacin, from the tropical annonaceous plant Annona muricata, is a lipophilic, mitochondrial complex I inhibitor reported to be more toxic than rotenone to mesencephalic neurons. The temperate annonaceous plant Asimina triloba (pawpaw) is native to the Eastern United States and products are available online. This study determined whether annonacin is in the pawpaw...

Crude oil is one of the most important energetic resources in the world. It is used as raw material in numerous industries, including the refinery-petrochemical industry, where crude oil is refined through various technological processes into consumer products such as gasoline, oils, paraffin oils, lubricants, asphalt, domestic fuel oil, vaseline, and polymers. Oil-derived products are also com...

Two methods were used to make crude preparations of surface-active compounds (SACs) produced by Gordonia amicalis grown on the medium containing 1% diesel oil. Using a 2:1 (v/v) solution of chloroform:methanol for extraction, Type I SACs were isolated and shown to produce oil in water (O/W) emulsions. Type II SACs were isolated by precipitation with ammonium sulfate and produced predominantly w...

Saponins in Platycodi Radix (platycosides) exhibit potent biological activities in mammalian systems, including several beneficial effects such as anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and anti-obesity activities. In this study, we developed a new HPLC separation coupled with evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) for the simultaneous quantitative determination of ten major saponins in Plat...

In this study, in vitro bioassays were performed to assess the ecotoxicological potential of sediments from Yangtze River estuary. The cytotoxicity and aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR)-mediated toxicity of sediment extracts with rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) liver cells were determined by neutral red retention and 7-ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase assays. The cytotoxicity and AhR-mediated act...