Microbial community profiling and culturing reveal functional groups of bacteria associated with Thai commercial stingless worker bees (Tetragonula pagdeni).

Stingless bees play a crucial role in the environment and agriculture as they are effective pollinators. Furthermore, they can produce various products that can be exploited economically, such as propolis and honey. Despite their economic value, the knowledge of microbial community of stingless bees, and their roles on the bees' health, especially in Thailand, are in its infancy.

Simple thermal and freezing treatments to improve absorption capacity and alter digestibility of canna starch granules.

Swollen canna starches (SCS) were prepared by controlled heating of unmodified and heat-moisture treated (HMT) starch suspensions at sub-gelatinization temperatures; subsequently, freezing was conducted to stabilize the structure of the SCS. Sizes of both unmodified and HMT swollen granules increased with increasing heating temperatures (up to 2.5 times), and freezing resulted in a significant reduction of granular size.

Impact of Nosema Disease and American Foulbrood on Gut Bacterial Communities of Honeybees .

Honeybees, , are important pollinators of many economically important crops. However, one of the reasons for their decline is pathogenic infection. Nosema disease and American foulbrood (AFB) disease are the most common bee pathogens that propagate in the gut of honeybees.

Bacterial Communities in Three Parts of Intestinal Tracts of Carpenter Bees ().

This study investigated different bacterial communities in three intestinal parts (foregut, midgut and hindgut) of to understand the roles of gut bacteria. Our phylogenetic analysis revealed that is closely related to . The 16S rRNA gene in the genomic DNA samples from the gut was examined by illumina (Solexa) and a total of 998 operational taxonomic unit (OTUs) clusters were found.

Impact of Sacbrood Virus on Larval Microbiome of and .

In this study, we examined the impact of Sacbrood virus (SBV), the cause of larval honeybee () death, producing a liquefied a larva sac, on the gut bacterial communities on two larval honeybee species, and . SBV was added into a worker jelly food mixture and bee larvae were grafted into each of the treatment groups for 24 h before DNA/RNA extraction. Confirmation of SBV infection was achieved using quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and visual symptomology.

Preterm infants harbour diverse populations, including atypical species that encode and produce an array of antimicrobial resistance- and virulence-associated factors.

spp. are frequently enriched in the gut microbiota of preterm neonates, and overgrowth is associated with necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), nosocomial infections and late-onset sepsis. Little is known about the genomic and phenotypic characteristics of preterm-associated , as previous studies have focused on the recovery of antimicrobial-resistant isolates or culture-independent molecular analyses.

Pasting properties of cassava starch modified by heat-moisture treatment under acidic and alkaline pH environments.

Effect of pH adjustment before heat-moisture treatment (HMT) on pasting properties of modified cassava starch was investigated. After soaking in acidic water, cassava starch contained smaller molecules, while starch soaked in alkaline water had a more negative charge. These starches with a moisture content of 25% were subsequently heat treated at 100 °C for 16 h.

Molecular dynamics exploration of poration and leaking caused by Kalata B1 in HIV-infected cell membrane compared to host and HIV membranes.

The membrane disruption activities of kalata B1 (kB1) were investigated using molecular dynamics simulations with membrane models. The models were constructed to mimic the lipid microdomain formation in membranes of HIV particle, HIV-infected cell, and host cell. The differences in the lipid ratios of these membranes caused the formation of liquid ordered (lo) domains of different sizes, which affected the binding and activity of kB1.

Concentration of plasticizers applied during heat-moisture treatment affects properties of the modified canna starch.

Effects of the concentration of plasticizers applied during heat-moisture treatment (HMT) on the properties of canna starch were investigated. The modified starches were prepared by soaking starch in 0 (water), 1, 3, 5, 10, 20 and 30% w/w glycerol or sorbitol solution for 24h and adjusting the moisture content to 25% before HMT (100°C, 1h). Changes in the pasting profiles of heat-moisture treated starches were more obvious when glycerol solutions were used instead of water.

Pasting properties of heat-moisture treated canna starches using different plasticizers during treatment.

Different plasticizers (propanol, propylene glycol, glycerol, erythritol, xylitol and sorbitol) were used for plasticizing canna starch during heat-moisture treatment (HMT). Pasting properties of the modified starches were determined and compared with those of native starch and of HMT starch using water as a plasticizer. Canna starch was soaked in 5% (w/w) plasticizer solutions and adjusted to 25% moisture content before heating at 100 °C for 1h.

The TTSMI database: a catalog of triplex target DNA sites associated with genes and regulatory elements in the human genome.

A triplex target DNA site (TTS), a stretch of DNA that is composed of polypurines, is able to form a triple-helix (triplex) structure with triplex-forming oligonucleotides (TFOs) and is able to influence the site-specific modulation of gene expression and/or the modification of genomic DNA. The co-localization of a genomic TTS with gene regulatory signals and functional genome structures suggests that TFOs could potentially be exploited in antigene strategies for the therapy of cancers and other genetic diseases. Here, we present the TTS Mapping and Integration (TTSMI; http://ttsmi.

Decision-making in honeybee swarms based on quality and distance information of candidate nest sites.

In the nest-site selection process of honeybee swarms, an individual bee performs a waggle dance to communicate information about direction, quality, and distance of a discovered site to other bees at the swarm. Initially, different groups of bees dance to represent different potential sites, but eventually the swarm usually reaches an agreement for only one site. Here, we model the nest-site selection process in honeybee swarms of Apis mellifera and show how the swarms make adaptive decisions based on a trade-off between the quality and distance to candidate nest sites.

Identification of non-coding RNAs with a new composite feature in the Hybrid Random Forest Ensemble algorithm.

To identify non-coding RNA (ncRNA) signals within genomic regions, a classification tool was developed based on a hybrid random forest (RF) with a logistic regression model to efficiently discriminate short ncRNA sequences as well as long complex ncRNA sequences. This RF-based classifier was trained on a well-balanced dataset with a discriminative set of features and achieved an accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 92.11%, 90.

Defining the membrane disruption mechanism of kalata B1 via coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations.

Kalata B1 has been demonstrated to have bioactivity relating to membrane disruption. In this study, we conducted coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to gain further insight into kB1 bioactivity. The simulations were performed at various concentrations of kB1 to capture the overall progression of its activity.