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The bacterial groups in the gut ecosystem play key role in the maintenance of host's metabolic and structural functionality. The gut microbiota enhances digestion processing, helps in digestion of complex substances, synthesizes beneficial bioactive compounds, enhances bioavailability of minerals, impedes growth of pathogenic microbes, and prevents various diseases. It is, therefore, desirable to have an adequate intake of prebiotic biomolecules, which promote favorable modulation of intestinal microflora. Prebiotics are non-digestible and chemically stable structures that significantly enhance growth and functionality of gut microflora. The non-digestible carbohydrate, mainly oligosaccharides, covers a major part of total available prebiotics as dietary additives. The review describes the types of prebiotic low molecular weight carbohydrates, i.e., oligosaccharides, their structure, biosynthesis, functionality, and applications, with a special focus given to fructooligosaccharides (FOSs). The review provides an update on enzymes executing hydrolytic and fructosyltransferase activities producing prebiotic FOS biomolecules, and future perspectives.

Iron insufficiency is a worldwide problem in human diets. In cereals like wheat, the bran layer of the grains is an important source of iron. However, the dietary availability of iron in wheat flour is limited due to the loss of the iron-rich bran during milling and processing and the presence of anti-nutrients like phytic acid that keep iron strongly chelated in the grain. The present study investigated the localization of iron and phosphorus in grain tissues of wheat genotypes with contrasting grain iron content using synchrotron-based micro-X-ray fluorescence (micro-XRF) and micro-proton-induced X-ray emission (micro-PIXE). X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) was employed to determine the proportion of divalent and trivalent forms of Fe in the grains. It revealed the abundance of oxygen, phosphorus, and sulphur in the local chemical environment of Fe in grains, as Fe-O-P-R and Fe-O-S-R coordination. Contrasting differences were noticed in tissue-specific relative localization of Fe, P, and S among the different genotypes, suggesting a possible effect of localization pattern on iron bioavailability. The current study reports the shift in iron distribution from maternal to filial tissues of grains during the evolution of wheat from its wild relatives to the present-day cultivated varieties, and thus suggests the value of detailed physical localization studies in varietal improvement programmes for food crops.

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Cheese is a product of ancient biotechnological practices, which has been revolutionized as a functional food product in many parts of the world. Bioactive compounds, such as peptides, polysaccharides, and fatty acids, have been identified in traditional cheese products, which demonstrate functional properties such as antihypertensive, antioxidant, immunomodulation, antidiabetic, and anticancer activities. Besides, cheese‐making probiotic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) exert a positive impact on gut health, aiding in digestion, and improved nutrient absorption. Advancement in biotechnological research revealed the potential of metabolite production with prebiotics and bioactive functions in several strains of LAB, yeast, and filamentous fungi. The application of specific biocatalyst producing microbial strains enhances nutraceutical value, resulting in designer cheese products with multifarious health beneficial effects. This review summarizes the biotechnological approaches applied in designing cheese products with improved functional properties.

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The recruitment of RNA polymerase II on a promoter is assisted by the assembly of basal transcriptional machinery in eukaryotes. The Spt-Ada-Gcn5-Acetyltransferase (SAGA) complex plays an important role in transcription regulation in eukaryotes. However, even in the advent of genome sequencing of various plants, SAGA complex has been poorly defined for their components and roles in plant development and physiological functions. Computational analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa genomes for SAGA complex resulted in the identification of 17 to 18 potential candidates for SAGA subunits. We have further classified the SAGA complex based on the conserved domains. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the SAGA complex proteins are evolutionary conserved between plants, yeast and mammals. Functional annotation showed that they participate not only in chromatin remodeling and gene regulation, but also in different biological processes, which could be indirect and possibly mediated via the regulation of gene expression. The in silico expression analysis of the SAGA components in Arabidopsis and O. sativa clearly indicates that its components have a distinct expression profile at different developmental stages. The co-expression analysis of the SAGA components suggests that many of these subunits co-express at different developmental stages, during hormonal interaction and in response to stress conditions. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis of SAGA component genes further confirmed their expression in different plant tissues and stresses. The expression of representative salt, heat and light inducible genes were affected in mutant lines of SAGA subunits in Arabidopsis. Altogether, the present study reveals expedient evidences of involvement of the SAGA complex in plant gene regulation and stress responses.

BackgroundRose-scented geranium (Pelargonium sp.) is a perennial herb that produces a high value essential oil of fragrant significance due to the characteristic compositional blend of rose-oxide and acyclic monoterpenoids in foliage. Recently, the plant has also been shown to produce tartaric acid in leaf tissues. Rose-scented geranium represents top-tier cash crop in terms of economic returns and significance of the plant and plant products. However, there has hardly been any study on its metabolism and functional genomics, nor any genomic expression dataset resource is available in public domain. Therefore, to begin the gains in molecular understanding of specialized metabolic pathways of the plant, de novo sequencing of rose-scented geranium leaf transcriptome, transcript assembly, annotation, expression profiling as well as their validation were carried out.Results De novo transcriptome analysis resulted a total of 78,943 unique contigs (average length: 623 bp, and N50 length: 752 bp) from 15.44 million high quality raw reads. In silico functional annotation led to the identification of several putative genes representing terpene, ascorbic acid and tartaric acid biosynthetic pathways, hormone metabolism, and transcription factors. Additionally, a total of 6,040 simple sequence repeat (SSR) motifs were identified in 6.8% of the expressed transcripts. The highest frequency of SSR was of tri-nucleotides (50%). Further, transcriptome assembly was validated for randomly selected putative genes by standard PCR-based approach. In silico expression profile of assembled contigs were validated by real-time PCR analysis of selected transcripts.ConclusionBeing the first report on transcriptome analysis of rose-scented geranium the data sets and the leads and directions reflected in this investigation will serve as a foundation for pursuing and understanding molecular aspects of its biology, and specialized metabolic pathways, metabolic engineering, genetic diversity as well as molecular breeding.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-016-3437-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.