The toxicity of 14 commercial natural dyes which are widely used as food additives in Japan was studied on Paramecium caudatum. Laccaic acid and capsanthin were found to be very toxic to Paramecium caudatum. Some of the commercially available carminic acid and crocin were also toxic. The inhibitory effect of natural food dyes on leucine aminopeptidase, acid phosphatase and esterase in vitro was...

Carminic acid is an aromatic polyketide found in scale insects (i.e., Dactylopius coccus) and a widely used natural red colorant. It has long been produced by the cumbersome farming of followed multistep purification processes. Thus, there much interest producing carminic fermentation engineered bacteria. Here we report complete biosynthesis from glucose Escherichia coli. We first optimized typ...

Hybrid pigments based on carminic acid (CA) stabilized by clay minerals have been prepared. Three different pathways were used: [email protected]; protected] saponite; and hydrogels of saponite-CA or montmorillonite-CA covered polyorganosilane (POS). Pigments characterized a set techniques including X-Ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), s...