Developing new colors for the food industry is challenging, as colorants need to be compatible with a food flavors, safety, and nutritional value, and which ultimately have a minimal impact on the price of the product. In addition, food colorants should preferably be natural rather than synthetic compounds. Micro-organisms already produce industrially useful natural colorants such as carotenoids and anthocyanins. Microbial food colorants can be produced at scale at relatively low costs. This review highlights the significance of color in the food industry, why there is a need to shift to natural food colors compared to synthetic ones and how using microbial pigments as food colorants, instead of colors from other natural sources, is a preferable option. We also summarize the microbial derived food colorants currently used and discuss their classification based on their chemical structure. Finally, we discuss the challenges faced by the use and development of food grade microbial pigments and how to deal with these challenges, using advanced techniques including metabolic engineering and nanotechnology.

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The rate of candiduria was relatively high in type 2 diabetic patients and they were also suffering from a lack of proper blood glucose control. Although the frequency of non-albicans Candida species had not significantly higher than C. albicans, however, they obtained more from those with symptomatic candiduria.

Shigella flexneri is the principal cause of bacillary dysentery, contributing significantly to the global burden of diarrheal disease. The appearance and increase in the multi-drug resistance among Shigella strains, necessitates further genetic studies and development of improved/new drugs against the pathogen. The presence of an abundance of hypothetical proteins in the genome and how little is known about them, make them interesting genetic targets. The present study aims to carry out characterization of the hypothetical proteins present in the genome of a newly emerged serotype of S. flexneri (strain Y394), toward their novel regulatory functions using various bioinformatics databases/tools. Analysis of the genome sequence rendered 4170 proteins, out of which 721 proteins were annotated as hypothetical proteins (HPs) with no known function. The amino acid sequences of these HPs were evaluated using a combination of latest bioinformatics tools based on homology search against functionally identified proteins. Functional domains were considered as the basis to infer the biological functions of HPs in this case and the annotation helped in assigning various classes to the proteins such as signal transducers, lipoproteins, enzymes, membrane proteins, transporters, virulence, and binding proteins. This study contributes to a better understanding of growth, survival, and disease mechanism at molecular level and provides potential new targets for designing drugs against Shigella infection.

Background: Recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC) is the second most common cause of genital tract infection in females. Excessive use of fluconazole and other azoles is likely to cause the emergence of the resistant species of Candida. Objective : The purpose of this research was to identify Candida isolates from RVVC and the antifungal effect of fluconazole against them. Methods : In this study, 152 patients with vulvovaginal candidiasis were evaluated for the RVVC form. The Candida isolates were purified using CHROMagar Candida and identified based on the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS1-ITS2 rDNA) sequence analysis by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method. The antifungal susceptibility of C. albicans isolates against fluconazole was determined according to document M27-A3. Results: Out of 152 patients, 20 cases (13.2%) were identified as recurrent form. The frequencies of the Candida species among the patients with RVVC were C. albicans (n = 16, 80%), C. parapsilosis (n = 3, 15%) and C. tropicalis (n = 1, 5%). The most common clinical sign was vaginal discharge (60%). The mean minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) of fluconazole against Candida isolates were 32 µg/mL and 64 µg/mL, respectively. Conclusion: C. albicans was the dominant cause of RVVC. The Candida isolates showed relatively high resistance to fluconazole in vitro. Vaginal discharge was the most common clinical sign among patients with RVVC.