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...

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...

in this study, urease production was investigated among thirteen strains of aspergillus niger seven strains isolated from soils of semnan province in iran and six strains obtained from persian type culture collection (ptcc). the enzyme production was screened in two submerged media quantitatively. the registered ptcc 5011 and the native s31 strains showed more urease production than the other e...

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...

Wastewater from swine confined-housing operations contains elevated levels of copper and zinc due to their abundance in feed. These metals may accumulate to phytotoxic levels in some agricultural soils of North Carolina due to land application of treated swine effluent. We evaluated fungi for their ability to remove these metals from wastewater and found Aspergillus niger best suited for this p...

The possible use of cotton waste as a carbohydrate source of citric acid production by Aspergillus niger was examined. No citric acid was produced when A. niger was grown on cotton waste as a sole carbon source. In two-stage fermentations, however, mycelium obtained from surface cultures in cotton waste medium yielded more citric acid when transferred to sucrose-containing media than when direc...

The effect of Solid State Fermentation (SSF) on Chitosan production by A. niger was investigated. A. niger BBRC 20004 from Biochemical and Bioenvironmental Research Centre of Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran), was grown on corn residue. Chitosan was extracted from the fungal mycelia using hot alkaline and acid treatment. A. niger was incubated for 12 days on corn residue with moist...

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...

In this study we have compared clinical data obtained from 40 reported cases of pulmonary Aspergillus niger intracavitary colonization in the literature and those of our series 23 cases. Additionaly six of our cases have been summarized. Our findings revealed a similar occurrence of male sex, active tuberculosis, diabetes mellitus, systemic oxalosis, and lethal outcome in both groups. In conclu...