Cloning Protocol of Aloe vera as a Study-Case for “Tailor-Made” Biotechnology to Small Farmers

Aloe vera has been used worldwide both for pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic industries due to the plethora of biological activities of some of its metabolites. A study case is reported focusing on the development of a cloning protocol of A. vera to provide propagation material with superior quality to the private sector in southern Brazil, i.e., A. vera juice industry. Such biotechnological approach afforded ca. 4,300 plantlets from 20 explants, over a 6-month period, overcoming the drawback of the lack of propagation material. Typically, the results have led to the increase of the cultured area and juice production of that species coming true the goal of the partnership between the public and private sectors herein involved. The transference of the resulting technology was successfully performed to the company and a patent covering the biotechnological process has been recently requested to official organisms on behalf of the partners.El Aloe vera ha sido empleado mundialmente en las industrias farmacéutica, alimentaria y cosmética, debido a la variedad de actividades biológicas de sus metabolitos. Un estudio de caso es reportado, enfocado en el desarrollo de un protocolo de clonamiento de A. vera para proveer propagación de material de calidad superior al sector privado en el sur de Brasil, por ejemplo, la industria de jugo de A. Vera. Ya que las plantas obtenidas mediante métodos biotecnológicos ascienden a 4300 plántulas desde 20 explantes, en un período de 6 meses, se hace un problema la inminente falta de material. Típicamente los resultados han conducido al incremento de del área cultivada y de la producción de jugo de las especies con verdaderos objetivos de asociatividad entre los sectores privados y públicos. La transferencia de la tecnología resultante fue exitosamente desempeñada hacia la compañía y una patente que protege el proceso biotecnológico ha sido recientemente solicitada a los organismos de patentamiento.Aloe vera has been used worldwide both for pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic industries due to the plethora of biological activities of some of its metabolites. A study case is reported focusing on the development of a cloning protocol of A. vera to provide propagation material with superior quality to the private sector in southern Brazil, i.e., A. vera juice industry. Such biotechnological approach afforded ca. 4,300 plantlets from 20 explants, over a 6-month period, overcoming the drawback of the lack of propagation material. Typically, the results have led to the increase of the cultured area and juice production of that species coming true the goal of the partnership between the public and private sectors herein involved. The transference of the resulting technology was successfully performed to the company and a patent covering the biotechnological process has been recently requested to official organisms on behalf of the partners

Optimal Controller Identification for multivariable non-minimum phase systems

This paper extends the formulation of a data-driven control method - the Optimal Controller Identification (OCI) - to cope with non-minimum phase (NMP) systems, without a priori knowledge of the NMP transmission zero, i.e. without obtaining a prior model of the plant - as in any data-driven approach. The method is based on the Model Reference paradigm, in which the desired closed-loop performance is specified by means of a closed-loop transfer function - the reference model. Considering a convenient parametrization of the latter and a flexible performance criterion, it is possible to identify the NMP transmission zeros of the plant along with the optimal controller parameters, as it will be shown. Both diagonal and block-triangular reference model structures are treated in detail. Simulation examples show the effectiveness of the proposed approach

A new variety of purple tomato as a rich source of bioactive carotenoids and its potential health benefits

Carotenoid-rich fractions (CRF) from pulp and peel of a new variety of purple tomato were investigated in comparison to a Red Cherry variety regarding carotenoids characterization, antioxidant capacity, and inhibition of proliferation of four tumor cell lines. CRF from peel of Purple tomato contains lutein, lycopene, and β-carotene up to 6, 1.5, and 2.5 times more than that of Red Cherry and it exhibited the highest antioxidant activity at 400 μg/mL, reaching 82% and 97% in DPPH and ABTS þ assays, respectively. Besides that, the Purple peel showed the highest scavenging lipoperoxides capacity as well as displayed the highest ferric reducing antioxidant power compared to the other CRF. In turn, the Red Cherry pulp CRF showed the highest antiproliferative activity against four tumor cell lines (MCF-7, NCI-H460, HeLa, and HepG2) at non-toxic concentrations. High concentration of neurosporene, and lycopene in Red Cherry pulp CRF show to be related to the good antiproliferative activity found on it. Therefore, this new variety of nutrient-rich purple tomato could be explored as well as the commercial variety Red Cherry, since both are good sources of dietary carotenoids with health-promoting properties.This work was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) [grant number 2014/11150-6]; and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) [grant numbers 306722/2012-7, 307040/2014-3, and 150015/2018-6) from Brazil; and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) for CIMO [grant numbers Pest OE/AGR/UI0690/2014; SFRH/BPD/68344/2010] from Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio