Diana R. Cundell – författare

Allicin is the major active sulfur-containing moiety that is released when garlic cloves are crushed or damaged. Since its first recorded use in ancient times to ward off snakebites and by the physician Hippocrates to treat pneumonia and heal wounds, allicin has come a long way and its attributes now include antimicrobial and anti-insecticidal activities. Given the rapid appearance of resistant microbes and insects, allicin clearly has merit in these spheres, even more so as resistance does not appear following its usage. More recently allicin has been successfully used as a complementary treatment for chronic inflammatory diseases, which include type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even certain tumors. Having a “natural” medicine, which is associated with an absence of side effects, can only be beneficial in conditions requiring long-term usage and it is clear that allicin’s potential as an individual or adjunct medicine needs to be evaluated. The gold standard for phase III human studies are double blind randomized placebo controlled trials and allicin’s success in this area is just beginning to be realized. Allicin has great potential, and maximizing its bioavailability could be enhanced using computational chemistry methodology combined with the stabilization methods already used for other phytomedicines, such as curcumin. Given the attention it deserves, it is likely that allicin will provide much needed alternative management strategies for decreasing infection and disease over the next decade.

Ginger has a strong reputation as an anti-nausea agent but our understanding of the roles played by its important biological constituents (gingerols and shogaols) as antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory agents has not been examined in detail. This series of monographs seeks to look first at how and why ginger was used as an ethnomedicine and how this expanded into general antimicrobial studies. One cardinal use for ginger and its constituents may be in the topical management of osteoarthritis. Given the widespread nature of this condition and ginger’s ability to block pain receptors it may join other molecules such as capsaicin in this mode of treatment.

This book is first part of the 3 volume set focusing on basic and advanced methods for using microbiology as an entrepreneurial venture.

This book is first part of the 3 volume set focusing on basic and advanced methods for using microbiology as an entrepreneurial venture. This book deals with the concept of entrepreneurship skills for production, cost-benefit analysis and marketing of vaccines, diagnostic kits, biofuels, biogas, organic acids, plant nutrition enhancer, biofungicides, molecular products from Microbes-Taq polymerase, restriction enzymes and DNA ligase. Chapters cover the applications of microorganisms in small and large scale production to achieve a sustainable output. The book provides essential knowledge and working business protocols for Enzyme Industry, Pharmaceutical Industry, vaccine production etc. This book is helpful to graduate students, research scholars and postdoctoral fellows, and teachers who belong to different disciplines via botany, industrial microbiology, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, molecular biology. Other two volumes are focused on food and agriculture microbiology.