Agar is a jelly-like biopolymer synthesized by many red seaweeds as their major cell wall component. Due to its excellent rheological properties, it has been exploited commercially for applications in food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, biomedical and biotechnology industries. Despite its multiple uses, the biosynthesis of this phycocolloid is not fully understood. The current knowledge on agar biosynthesis is inferred from plant biochemistry and putative pathways for ulvan and alginate biosynthesis in green and brown seaweeds, respectively. In this review, the gaps in our current knowledge on agar biosynthetic pathway are discussed, focusing on the biosynthesis of agar precursors, elongation of agar polysaccharide chain and side chain modification. The development of molecular markers for the screening of desired seaweeds for industrial exploitation is also discussed.

Kefir is a fermented beverage with renowned probiotics that coexist in symbiotic association with other microorganisms in kefir grains. This beverage consumption is associated with a wide array of nutraceutical benefits, including anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidative, anti-cancer, anti-microbial, anti-diabetic, anti-hypertensive, and anti-hypercholesterolemic effects. Moreover, kefir can be adapted into different substrates which allow the production of new functional beverages to provide product diversification. Being safe and inexpensive, there is an immense global interest in kefir’s nutritional potential. Due to their promising benefits, kefir and kefir-like products have a great prospect for commercialization. This manuscript reviews the therapeutic aspects of kefir to date, and potential applications of kefir products in the health and food industries, along with the limitations. The literature reviewed here demonstrates that there is a growing demand for kefir as a functional food owing to a number of health-promoting properties.

Agar, a gelatinous polysaccharide in the cell wall of many red algal species, is widely used as a gelling, thickening and stabilizing agent. The commercial value of seaweed is judged by their agar content and gel quality. Seaweed materials with higher agar yield and better gelling properties are desired due to the growing demand for agar in the global market. Agar biosynthesis in seaweeds is affected by genetic variations, developmental stages and environmental conditions, while different agar extraction techniques can also affect the yield and quality of agar. In this paper, the effects of different physiological states of seaweed, abiotic and biotic factors, seaweed storage and agar extraction techniques on the agar yield and gelling characteristics, are reviewed. This information is important as a guide for marine aquaculture of potential agarophytes and the possible effects of climate change on the stock of this natural resource.

Isoprenoids are a large and diverse group of metabolites with interesting properties such as flavour, fragrance and therapeutic properties. They are produced via two pathways, the mevalonate pathway or the 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol-4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. While plants are the richest source of isoprenoids, they are not the most efficient producers. Escherichia coli and yeasts have been extensively studied as heterologous hosts for plant isoprenoids production. In the current study, we describe the usage of the food grade Lactococcus lactis as a potential heterologous host for the production of sesquiterpenes from a local herbaceous Malaysian plant, Persicaria minor (synonym Polygonum minus). A sesquiterpene synthase gene from P. minor was successfully cloned and expressed in L. lactis. The expressed protein was identified to be a β-sesquiphellandrene synthase as it was demonstrated to be functional in producing β-sesquiphellandrene at 85.4% of the total sesquiterpenes produced based on in vitro enzymatic assays. The recombinant L. lactis strain developed in this study was also capable of producing β-sesquiphellandrene in vivo without exogenous substrates supplementation. In addition, overexpression of the strain’s endogenous 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme-A reductase (HMGR), an established rate-limiting enzyme in the eukaryotic mevalonate pathway, increased the production level of β-sesquiphellandrene by 1.25–1.60 fold. The highest amount achieved was 33 nM at 2 h post-induction.

The emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has urged researchers to explore therapeutic alternatives, one of which includes the use of natural plant products such as essential oils (EO). In fact, EO obtained from clove, oregano, thymus, cinnamon bark, rosemary, eucalyptus, and lavender have been shown to present significant inhibitory effects on bacteria, fungi, and viruses; many studies have been done to measure EO efficacy against microorganisms. The strategy of combinatory effects via conventional and non-conventional methods revealed that the combined effects of EO–EO or EO–antibiotic exhibit enhanced efficacy. This paper aims to review the antimicrobial effects of EO, modes of EO action (membrane disruption, efflux inhibition, increase membrane permeability, and decrease in intracellular ATP), and their compounds’ potential as effective agents against bacteria, fungi, and viruses. It is hoped that the integration of EO applications in this work can be used to consider EO for future clinical applications.

The human population has reached 7 billion by 2015 and is estimated to exceed 10 billion by the end of 2050. As such, crops which are the main food source must be produced at a higher pace in order to cater in tandem with the food demand. In the past, traditional plant breeders practice classical breeding techniques to propagate plants with desirable traits. However, traditional breeding technique lies in that only individuals of the same or closely related species can be crossbred. Moreover, traditional breeders will not be able to obtain traits which are not inherent within the gene pool of their target plants through classical breeding. With recent advancements in the field of genetic engineering, it is now possible to insert beneficial genes from a completely different species or even kingdom into a target plant, yielding transgenic plants with multiple ideal traits. To develop a transgenic plant, parameters such as vector constructions, transformation methods, transgene integration, and inheritance of transgene need to be carefully considered to ensure the success of the transformation event. Hence, this chapter aimed to provide an overview of transgenic plants' development, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as its application for the betterment of mankind.

Vanda Mimi Palmer is the product of a cross between Vanda Tan Chay Yan and Vanda tessellata. The flower of this hybrid produces a sweet-smelling fragrance during day time at the open-flower stage. This study aimed to investigate the floral scent constituents in Vanda Mimi Palmer. Scent emission analysis of this orchid was carried out at different time points in a 24-h cycle and also at different floral developmental stages. A comparison was also made on the volatiles emitted by Vanda Mimi Palmer and both of its parents. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis showed that the scent of Vanda Mimi Palmer was dominated by terpenoid, benzenoid, and phenylpropanoid compounds. The identified terpenoids were ocimene, linalool oxide, linalool, and nerolidol; while the benzenoid and phenylpropanoid compounds were methylbenzoate, benzyl acetate, phenylethanol, and phenylethyl acetate. The emission of terpenoid, benzenoid, and phenylpropanoid compounds was developmentally and temporally regulated. Comparison of the volatiles emitted by both of its parents showed that the scent of Vanda Mimi Palmer is dissimilar to that of its fragrant parent, V. tessellata.

The nucleocapsid protein of Nipah virus produced in Escherichia coli assembled into herringbone-like particles. The amino-and carboxy-termini of the N protein were shortened progressively to define the minimum contiguous sequence involved in capsid assembly. The first 29 aa residues of the N protein are dispensable for capsid formation. The 128 carboxy-terminal residues do not play a role in the assembly of the herringbone-like particles. A region with amino acid residues 30-32 plays a crucial role in the formation of the capsid particle. Deletion of any of the four conserved hydrophobic regions in the N protein impaired capsid formation. Replacement of the central conserved regions with the respective sequences from the Newcastle disease virus restored capsid formation.Nipah virus (NiV), the second member of the genus Henipavirus (Wang et al., 2000(Wang et al., , 2001, has been associated with several outbreaks of viral encephalitis in humans in South-east Asia. The first and largest NiV outbreak in Malaysia ended a year after its identification in 1998. During this period, more than 100 human lives were claimed and the pig industry in the country was paralysed. Pig farms were forced to close and millions of pigs were culled in order to control the viral outbreak (Chua et al., 1999(Chua et al., , 2000. Two years later, an outbreak in Bangladesh alerted the world to the reoccurrence of this virus (Hsu et al., 2004;Harcourt et al., 2005). Shocking news were reported in 2004 from India where the mortality rate of the infected patients was more than 70 % (Diederich & Maisner, 2007). The spread of the virus from human to human was suspected, and no pig intermediary was reported (Chadha et al., 2006). Several species of flying foxes, in the genus Pteropus, have been identified as the natural reservoirs of NiV (Eaton et al., 2006).NiV has a single-stranded negative-sense RNA of approximately 18.2 kb which encodes six major structural proteins: nucleocapsid (N), phospho-(P), matrix (M), fusion (F), glyco-(G) and large (L) proteins (Wang et al., 2001). The most abundant structural protein, N, and the genomic RNA constitute the core helical nucleocapsid structure of NiV. The genomic RNA is associated with the N, P and L proteins to form the ribonucleoprotein complex (Diederich & Maisner, 2007).Structural and functional studies of the N protein of paramyxoviruses have been the main focus for years, due to its crucial functional role during the replication of the genomic RNA. Transmission electron microscopic studies revealed that all the paramyxovirus nucleocapsids are helical in structure, but there are significant differences among the virus genera (Bhella et al., 2002) such as Sendai virus (SeV; Myers et al., 1999), measles virus (MeV;Bhella et al., 2004) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV; MacLellan et al., 2007). This is most likely due to the differences in the primary structure of the N proteins of these viruses which determine the tertiary and quaternary structures of the nucleocapsids.For members of the genus H...