Molecular and in vitro assessment of some probiotic characteristics of amylolytic strains from Bulgarian fermented products.

In the recent years, consumers' interest in healthy diet opened a new field for functional food development through combining the valuable composition of cereals and the health-promoting properties of lactic acid bacteria (LAB). LAB with amylolytic properties can assimilate starch in a single-step process and could be successfully applied as starter cultures offering an efficient nutritional conversion of cereal matrices. The probiotic potential of amylolytic LAB has not been investigated so far, therefore the present study focused on the molecular screening and in vitro tests of five amylolytic strains to assess their tolerance to high acid and bile salts concentrations and antibiotic resistance as basic characteristics required for probiotic strains selection.

Progress in enzyme inhibition based detection of pesticides.

The previous few decades have seen the development of biosensors and their use in monitoring of pesticides in food and environmental samples. Although inhibition-based biosensors have been subject of several recent research works, their performance characteristics greatly depend on the type of immobilization and the presence of interfering compounds in the samples. Moreover, sensitivity, detection limits, and rapidity of the response are few of the other major features that need to be investigated further if they are to become operationally user-friendly.