Critical Reviews in Biotechnology最新文献

The human living environment serves as a habitat for microorganisms and the presence of ubiquitous airborne microbes significantly impacts the natural material cycle. Through ongoing experimentation with beneficial microorganisms, humans have greatly benefited from airborne microbes. However, airborne pathogens endanger human health and have the potential to induce fatal diseases. Tracking airborne microbes is a critical prerequisite for a better understanding of bioaerosols, harnessing their potential advantages, and mitigating associated risks. Although technological breakthroughs have enabled significant advancements in accurately monitoring airborne pathogens, many puzzles about these microbes remain unanswered due to their high variability and environmental diffusibility. Consequently, advanced techniques and strategies for special identification, early warning, and efficient eradication of microbial contamination are continuously being sought. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the research status of airborne microbes, concentrating on the recent advances and challenges in sampling, detection, and inactivation. Particularly, the fundamental design principles for the collection and timely detection of airborne pathogens are described in detail, as well as critical factors for eliminating microbial contamination and enhancing indoor air quality. In addition, future research directions and perspectives for controlling airborne microbes are also suggested to promote the translation of basic research into real products.

Recent studies are increasingly focusing on advanced biotechnological tools, self-adjusting smart microorganisms, and artificial intelligent networks, to engineer microorganisms with various functions. Microbial cell factories are a vital platform for improving the bioproduction of medicines, biofuels, and biomaterials from renewable carbon sources. However, these processes are significantly affected by cellular metabolism, and boosting the efficiency of microbial cell factories remains a challenge. In this review, we present a strategy for reprogramming cellular metabolism to enhance the efficiency of microbial cell factories for chemical biosynthesis, which improves our understanding of microbial physiology and metabolic control. Current methods are mainly focused on synthetic pathways, metabolic resources, and cell performance. This review highlights the potential biotechnological strategy to reprogram cellular metabolism and provide novel guidance for designing more intelligent industrial microbes with broader applications in this growing field.

The use of organic-inorganic hybrid nanoflowers as a support material for enzyme immobilization has gained significant attention in recent years due to their high stability, ease of preparation, and enhanced catalytic activity. However, a major challenge in utilizing these hybrid nanoflowers for enzyme immobilization is the difficulty in handling and separating them due to their low density and high dispersion. To address this issue, magnetic nanoflowers have emerged as a promising alternative enzyme immobilization platform due to their easy separation, structural stability, and ability to enhance catalytic efficiency. This review focuses on different methods for designing magnetic nanoflowers, as well as future research directions. Additionally, it provides examples of enzymes immobilized in the form of magnetic nanoflowers and their applications in environmental remediation, biosensors, and food industries. Finally, the review discusses possible ways to improve the material for enhanced catalytic activity, structural stability, and scalability.

The intensification of food production via conventional crop breeding alone is inadequate to cater for global hunger. The development of precise and expeditious high throughput reverse genetics approaches has hugely benefited modern plant breeding programs. Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes (TILLING) is one such reverse genetics approach which employs chemical/physical mutagenesis to create new genetic sources and identifies superior/novel alleles. Owing to technical limitations and sectional applicability of the original TILLING protocol, it has been timely modified. Successions include: EcoTILLING, Double stranded EcoTILLING (DEcoTILLING), Self-EcoTILLING, Individualized TILLING (iTILLING), Deletion-TILLING (De-TILLING), PolyTILLING, and VeggieTILLING. This has widened its application to a variety of crops and needs. They can characterize mutations in coding as well as non-coding regions and can overcome complexities associated with the large genomes. Combining next generation sequencing tools with the existing TILLING protocols has enabled screening of huge germplasm collections and mutant populations for the target genes. In silico TILLING platforms have transformed TILLING into an exciting breeding approach. The present review outlines these multifarious TILLING modifications for precise mutation detection and their application in advance breeding programmes together with relevant case studies. Appropriate use of these protocols will open up new avenues for crop improvement in the twenty first century.

3D bioprinting is an advanced technology combining cells and bioactive molecules within a single bioscaffold; however, this scaffold cannot change, modify or grow in response to a dynamic implemented environment. Lately, a new era of smart polymers and hydrogels has emerged, which can add another dimension, e.g., time to 3D bioprinting, to address some of the current approaches' limitations. This concept is indicated as 4D bioprinting. This approach may assist in fabricating tissue-like structures with a configuration and function that mimic the natural tissue. These scaffolds can change and reform as the tissue are transformed with the potential of specific drug or biomolecules released for various biomedical applications, such as biosensing, wound healing, soft robotics, drug delivery, and tissue engineering, though 4D bioprinting is still in its early stages and more works are required to advance it. In this review article, the critical challenge in the field of 4D bioprinting and transformations from 3D bioprinting to 4D phases is reviewed. Also, the mechanistic aspects from the chemistry and material science point of view are discussed too.

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum spp.) is an underutilized resilient crop of North Western Himalayas belonging to the family Polygonaceae and is a source of essential nutrients and therapeutics. Common Buckwheat and Tatary Buckwheat are the two main cultivated species used as food. It is the only grain crop possessing rutin, an important metabolite with high nutraceutical potential. Due to its inherent tolerance to various biotic and abiotic stresses and a short life cycle, Buckwheat has been proposed as a model crop plant. Nutritional security is one of the major concerns, breeding for a nutrient-dense crop such as Buckwheat will provide a sustainable solution. Efforts toward improving Buckwheat for nutrition and yield are limited due to the lack of available: genetic resources, genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics. In order to harness the agricultural importance of Buckwheat, an integrated breeding and OMICS platforms needs to be established that can pave the way for a better understanding of crop biology and developing commercial varieties. This, coupled with the availability of the genome sequences of both Buckwheat species in the public domain, should facilitate the identification of alleles/QTLs and candidate genes. There is a need to further our understanding of the molecular basis of the genetic regulation that controls various economically important traits. The present review focuses on: the food and nutritional importance of Buckwheat, its various omics resources, utilization of omics approaches in understanding Buckwheat biology and, finally, how an integrated platform of breeding and omics will help in developing commercially high yielding nutrient rich cultivars in Buckwheat.

Nucleic acids have the ability to generate advanced nanostructures in a controlled manner and can interact with target sequences or molecules with high affinity and selectivity. For this reason, they have applications in a variety of nanotechnology applications, from highly specific sensors to smart nanomachines and even in other applications such as enantioselective catalysis or drug delivery systems. However, a common disadvantage is the use of water as the ubiquitous solvent. The use of nucleic acids in non-aqueous solvents offers the opportunity to create a completely new toolbox with unprecedented degrees of freedom. Ionic liquids (ILs) and deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are the most promising alternative solvents due to their unique electrolyte and solvent roles, as well as their ability to maintain the stability and functionality of nucleic acids. This review aims to be a comprehensive, critical, and accessible evaluation of how much this goal has been achieved and what are the most critical parameters for accomplishing a breakthrough.

Lignin is a complex of organic polymers that are abundantly present in the plant cell wall which considered of emerging substrates for various kinds of value-added industrial products. Lignin has potential use for the production of green nanomaterials, which exhibit improved or different properties corresponding to their parent polymers. Nano lignin has received significant interest in recent years due to its applications in numerous fields. Lignin, the abundant and limited functionality has challenges for its potential uses. Creating advanced functional lignin-derived material like lignin nanoparticles (LNPs) which significantly alter the biological process has great potential for its applications. In the fields of biotechnology, several lignin extraction processes from various raw materials and diverse synthesis techniques, including acid precipitation, dialysis, solvent shifting/solvent exchange, antisolvent precipitation, homogenization, water-in-oil (W/O) microemulsion, ultra-sonication, interfacial crosslinking, polymerization, and biological pathway can be employed to produce LNPs. The scientific community has recently become more concerned about the transformation of lignin to lignin nanomaterials, including nanoparticles, nanocapsules, nanofibers, nanotubes, and nanofilms. Recent research has shown that lignin nanoparticles (LNPs) are: non-toxic at adequate amounts (both in vitro and in vivo), are economical, and can be biodegradable by bacteria and fungi. In promising studies, LNPs have been investigated for their potential applications in gene delivery systems, drug carriers, biocatalysts, tissue engineering, heavy metal absorbers, encapsulation of molecules, supercapacitors, hybrid nanocomposites, and other applications. This current review addresses the recent advances in the synthesis of LNPs, their advanced application in different areas, future perspectives, and challenges associated with lignin-based nanomaterials.

The utilization of microalgae to treat carbon dioxide (CO₂)-rich industrial off-gas has been suggested as both beneficial for emissions reduction and economically favorable for the production of microalgal products. Common sources of off-gases include coal combustion (2-15% CO₂), cement production (8-15% CO₂), coke production (18-23% CO₂), and ore smelting (6-7% CO₂). However, industrial off-gas also commonly contains other acid gas components [typically nitrogen oxides (NO_X) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂)] and metals that could inhibit microalgae growth and productivity. To utilize industrial off-gas effectively in microalgae cultivation systems, a number of solutions have been proposed to overcome potential inhibitions. These include bioprospecting to identify suitable strains, genetic modification to improve specific cellular characteristics, chemical additions, and bioreactor designs and operating procedures.In this review, results from microalgae experiments related to utilizing off-gas are presented, and the outcomes of different conditions discussed along with potential solutions to resolve limitations associated with the application of off-gas.

Fungi-mediated synthesis of Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) has advantages in: high efficiency, low energy consumption, no need for extra capping and stabilizing agents, simple operation, and easy isolation and purification. Many fungi have been found to synthesize AuNPs inside cells or outside cells, providing different composition and properties of particles when different fungi species or reaction conditions are used. This is good to produce AuNPs with different properties, but may cause challenges to precisely control the particle shape, size, and activities. Besides, low concentrations of substrate and fungal biomass are needed to synthesize small-size particles, limiting the yield of AuNPs in a large scale. To find clues for the development methods to solve these challenges, the reported mechanisms of the fungi-mediated synthesis of AuNPs were summarized. The mechanisms of intracellular AuNPs synthesis are dependent on gold ions absorption by the fungal cell wall via proteins, polysaccharides, or electric absorption, and the reduction of gold ions via enzymes, proteins, and other cytoplasmic redox mediators in the cytoplasm or cell wall. The extracellular synthesis of AuNPs is mainly due to the metabolites outside fungal cells, including proteins, peptides, enzymes, and phenolic metabolites. These mechanisms cause the great diversity of the produced AuNPs in functional groups, element composition, shapes, sizes, and properties. Many methods have been developed to improve the synthesis efficiency by changing: chloroauric acid concentrations, reaction temperature, pH, fungal mass, and reaction time. However, future studies are still required to precisely control the: shape, size, composition, and properties of fungal AuNPs.