Exploring the arsenal of antimicrobial peptides: Mechanisms, diversity, and applications.

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are essential for defence against pathogens in all living organisms and possessed activities against bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites and even cancer cells. AMPs are short peptides containing 12-100 amino acids conferring a net positive charge and an amphiphilic property in most cases. Although, anionic AMPs also exist.

A review on occurrence of emerging pollutants in waters of the MENA region.

Little is known about the occurrence of emerging pollutants (EPs) in waters in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region despite the extensive use of low-quality water there. Available data dealing with the sources, occurrence and removal of EPs within the MENA region in different categories of water is collected, presented and analyzed in this literature review. According to the collected database, the occurrence and removal efficiency of EPs in the water matrix in the MENA region is available, respectively, for 13 and six countries of the 18 in total; no available data is registered for the rest.

POP levels in beans from Mediterranean and tropical areas.

Background: Despite the importance of beans as food, few studies are conducted to control their contamination by persistent organic pollutants (POPs), compounds of great importance because of their toxicity and tendency to accumulate in food chains. In order to evaluate the human exposure to POPs by the consumption of beans a monitoring programme was conducted on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) residues in samples coming from Italy, Mexico, India, Japan, Ghana and Ivory Coast. All beans were extracted with an accelerated solvents extractor in triplicate; the clean-up step was done with a Florisil column; identification and quantification was carried out using a TSQ Quantum XLS Ultra GC-MS/MS in selected reaction monitoring mode.

Occurrence and distribution of PAHs, PCBs, and chlorinated pesticides in Tunisian soil irrigated with treated wastewater.

Treated wastewater (TWW) is a well recognized source of organic pollutants (OPs) that may accumulate during irrigation. For the first time, data on the occurrence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyles (PCBs) and organochlorinated pesticides (OCPs) in wastewater irrigated soil in Nabeul (Tunisia) are reported. 13 PAHs, 18 PCBs and 16 OCPs were analyzed in soil samples collected at 0-10 and 10-20 cm depth before each and every irrigation and after the irrigation period expanding from June to October.