The biochemical properties of extracellular proteases enzymes from Malaysia Alkalophilic’s bacteria, Bacillus lehensis G1, were investigated. The secreted enzymes were tested on 2% of skim milk agar. Results demonstrated that the enzyme could maintain the activity up to 60°C within an extensive range of pH from 3 to 11 with the optimal pH and temperature of 7.0 and 40°C, respectively. The proteases activity were also observed to be increased in the presence of several ions such as Mn2+, Fe2+, Cu2+, Mg2+ and Co2+. Whilst, the enzyme activity was marginally inhibited with the addition of Ca2+, K+ and Ni2+ with the residual activity of 85%, 81%, and 75%, respectively. Furthermore, the extracellular proteases have shown to be compatible with several Malaysia commercial liquid detergents, which could be beneficial for stain removal. The potential application of proteases in gelatine decomposition from used X-ray films was also determined in this article.

Due to the issues of species substitution and product mislabelling of beche-de-mer worldwide, this study aimed to identify the species of seven gamat-based beche-de-mer specimens from Kuah, Langkawi Island, Kedah, Malaysia based on ossicle shapes and non-protein-coding 12S mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences. In general, ossicles were well extracted from the specimens. At least eight ossicle shapes were observed i.e. large I-shaped rod, perforated plate, table, C-shaped rod, button, rosette, I-shaped rod and X-shaped rod. Except for button, I-shaped rod and X-shaped rod, the other five ossicle shapes are common in Stichopus horrens. However, the species status could not be resolved at this level due to the presence of uncommon ossicle shapes and the physical features of the specimens could not be used as supporting data as they were different from the live or unprocessed sea cucumber. In this study, 12S mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences were analysed using the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool programme for Nucleotides (blastn), resulting in the species identification of the beche-de-mer specimens as S. horrens, known locally as gamat emas (golden sea cucumber) with 96-99% similarity (an average of 98%). The phylogenetic trees based on the Neighbour-Joining method, Maximum Parsimony method and Maximum Likelihood method indicated that all 12S mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences of the beche-de-mer specimens clustered with the reference samples of S. horrens from Pangkor Laut, Pangkor Island, Perak, Malaysia, supporting the BLASTN results and confirming their species status as S. horrens. Furthermore, 10 partial 12S mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences of the reference samples and the beche-de-mer specimens of S. horrens were registered with the GenBank (Accession No.: KX879628-KX879637). Overall, the findings suggested that the species identification of the beche-de-mer specimens using 12S mitochondrial rRNA gene sequence gave better inference than ossicle-shape identification. The outcomes of this study benefit enforcement agencies in their work of monitoring and overcoming the issues of species substitution and product mislabelling of beche-de-mer or commercial dried sea cucumber in Malaysian markets as well as in global markets. � Universiti Putra Malaysia Press.

Coccidiosis in chickens is caused by the apicomplexan parasite Eimeria tenella and is thought to involve a role for a superfamily of more than 20 cysteine-rich surface antigen glycoproteins (SAGs) in host-parasite interactions. A representative member of the family, SAG19, has been overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified and crystallized by the hanging-drop method of vapour diffusion using ammonium sulfate as the precipitant. Crystals of SAG19 diffracted to beyond 1.50� resolution and belonged to space group I4, with unit-cell parameters a = b = 108.2, c = 37.5�. Calculation of possible values of V M suggests that there is a single molecule in the asymmetric unit. � 2013 International Union of Crystallography.

Osmotic dehydration (OD) of starfruit chips by glucose syrup was chosen as the osmotic agent (OA) in this study as it is believed to confer a desirable result in the final product. As in this study, the concentration of glucose syrup that was used is 30, 40 and 50°Brix with soaking temperature of 20°C to 60°C and soaking time of 20 min to 60 min. The result showed that higher water loss and lower solid gain of starfruits obtained as the higher temperature and glucose syrup concentrations were used. Meanwhile, processing of osmo-dried starfruits into chips were done by stir frying with canola oil. The use of glucose syrup with concentration of 50°B, 60°C temperature and 60 min soaking time produced the highest hardness and crispness of starfruit chips with the lowest moisture content. Test of significance (p<0.05) in results obtained from this study were determined using Minitab 18 software as one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey-Test. In general, OD pre-treatment could be proved as an effective technique for food industries to develop fried starfruit chips with improved texture quality. © 2020, Malaysian Society of Applied Biology. All rights reserved.