Combined sensory, volatilome and transcriptome analyses identify a limonene terpene synthase as a major contributor to the characteristic aroma of a Coffea arabica L. specialty coffee.

Background: The fruity aromatic bouquet of coffee has attracted recent interest to differentiate high value market produce as specialty coffee. Although the volatile compounds present in green and roasted coffee beans have been extensively described, no study has yet linked varietal molecular differences to the greater abundance of specific substances and support the aroma specificity of specialty coffees.

Results: This study compared four Arabica genotypes including one, Geisha Especial, suggested to generate specialty coffee.

Virus-based pharmaceutical production in plants: an opportunity to reduce health problems in Africa.

Background: Developing African countries face health problems that they struggle to solve. The major causes of this situation are high therapeutic and logistical costs. Plant-made therapeutics are easy to produce due to the lack of the safety considerations associated with traditional fermenter-based expression platforms, such as mammalian cells.

Nicotiana benthamiana is a suitable transient system for high-level expression of an active inhibitor of cotton boll weevil α-amylase.

Background: Insect resistance in crops represents a main challenge for agriculture. Transgenic approaches based on proteins displaying insect resistance properties are widely used as efficient breeding strategies. To extend the spectrum of targeted pathogens and overtake the development of resistance, molecular evolution strategies have been used on genes encoding these proteins to generate thousands of variants with new or improved functions.