The Niger Delta is dying. Petrobusiness activities have caused severe environmental damage and climate change in its communities thus leading to massive destruction of farmlands, wild and marine lives. This has not been without dire social consequences on local communities of the Niger Delta which are doubly impoverished with attendant increase in abuse occasioned by struggle for survival. This...

Antimicrobial activity of 25, 50, 75 and 100% alcohol extract of Piper nigrum (Black Pepper), Psidium guajava (Guava), Amomum cardamom (Cardamom) and Cynogen dactylon (Bermuda grass) has been evaluated against Pseudomonas lundensis, Bacillus cereus, Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus. Psidium guajava extract showed excellent antimicrobial activity against all the test organisms. In 25% co...

Citric acid is regarded as a metabolite of energy metabolism, of which the concentration will rise to appreciable amounts only under conditions of substantive metabolic imbalances. Citric acid fermentation conditions were established during the 1930s and 1940s, when the effects of various medium components were evaluated. The biochemical mechanism by which Aspergillus niger accumulates citric a...

In the biosynthesis of tropane alkaloids, two tropinone reductases (TRs) catalyze reduction of tropinone to different stereoisomers, tropine and pseudotropine. Two TRs from Hyoscyamus niger have 64% of identical amino acids and hence a common evolutionary origin. In this study, genomic clones of TRs were isolated from H. niger. Their sequence comparison showed that although they have the same e...

In a recent issue of PNAS, Scheinfeldt et al. (1) maintained that, although Fulani mtDNA is consistent with a West African origin, the linguistic and nonrecombinant portion of the Y chromosome (NRY) supports a Middle Eastern origin for this population. Although this is their opinion, the linguistic and genetic evidence fails to support this conclusion. The Fulani speak a Niger-Congo language. T...

Parrotfishes (family Labridae: Scarini) are regarded to have important roles for maintaining the ecosystem balance in coral reefs due to their removal of organic matter and calcic substrates by grazing. The purpose of the present study was to clarify the interspecific differences in grazing ability of five parrotfish species (Chlorurus sordidus, C. bowersi, Scarus rivulatus, S. niger and S. for...

Infections due to Aspergillus species cause significant morbidity and mortality. Most are attributed to Aspergillus fumigatus, followed by Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus terreus. Aspergillus niger is a mould that is rarely reported as a cause of pneumonia. A 72-year-old female with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and temporal arteritis being treated with steroids long term presented w...

The Niger Delta is located in Southern Nigeria and is Africa’s largest delta, covering about 70,000 square kilometers, and with about one-third of it made up of wetlands, and the third largest world mangrove forests. The Niger Delta is unique in Nigeria because it is the home of Nigeria’s oil industry, with its attendant environmental hazards such as water, land, air pollution, etc. Human activ...

The biotransformation of sucrose to fructooligosaccharides was investigated using the catalytic action of fructosyltransferase originated from marine Aspergillus niger, using whole cell immobilization. The biomass production and enzymatic reaction were carried out in shake flask. A fructosyltransferase enzyme producing fungi locally isolated from sea water from South East cost of India, by usin...

Aspergillus niger has shown production of metal chelating compounds mainly oxalic acid and citric acid. Production of oxalic acid by Aspergillus niger was found maximum in presence of Pb, followed by Cu+Pb and Cu. With increase in concentration of Pb to 50, 100 and 250 mg/L, the production of oxalic acid was increased. Whereas increase in concentration of Cu+Pb and Cu, resulted in decreased pro...