Recent Patents on Biotechnology - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2010

The reconstruction of hard and soft tissues is a major challenge in regenerative medicine, since diseases or traumas are causing increasing numbers of tissue defects due to the aging of the population. Modern tissue engineering is increasingly using three-dimensional structured biomaterials in combination with stem cells as cell source, since mature cells are often not available in sufficient amounts or quality. Bio Read More

Extracellular production of heterologous proteins using the Escherichia coli cell factory offers several advantages over intracellular production and mammalian culture. Properly folded proteins can be rapidly accumulated in the culture media, and downstream processes for isolation and purification can be much simplified. Efforts to enhance the secretory production of target proteins can be largely classified as selection Read More

Carbohydrates are important molecules in various technological fields. The regio- and stereoselective synthesis of oligosaccharides for food and pharmaceutical molecular design and the selective glycosylation of peptides, proteins and drugs, as well as the selective hydrolysis of natural abundant saccharidic materials affording low molecular weight highvalue- added products, can be all considered significant aspects. Adv Read More

The indiscriminate use of synthetic pesticides has brought undesired problems to human health, agriculture, and the environment. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Biological Control (BC) programs, which are based on minimum use of pesticides, are seen as alternative, more ecological solutions to the unintended problems associated with pesticide use. These programs combine the introduction, augmentation, and/or co Read More

Effluent standards have become more and more stringent due to an increase in awareness about environmental impacts on both continuous and intermittent polluting discharge. For that, a high efficient waste water treatment plants are needed to be designed. Membrane bioreactor (MBR) can be good solution to cope with such issues. MBR systems respects the conventional activated sludge process which use microorganis Read More

Endophytes are microorganisms that live within host plants for at least part of their life and do not cause apparent symptoms of diseases. In general, beneficial endophytes promote host plant growth, increase plant nutrient uptake, inhibit plant pathogen growth, reduce disease severity, and enhance tolerance to environmental stresses. As sustainable and renewable agricultural production (including current biofuel and bi Read More

The patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent data bases. These recent patents are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue, categorized by different biotechnology methods, process and techniques involved.