Penciptaan manusia menurut Al Quran

Al-Quran Al-Kareem – kitab yang tidak ada keraguan padanya – merupakan mukjizat terbesar yang diturunkan oleh Allah S.W.T. kepada junjungan besar kita Nabi Muhammad S.A.W. Di dalamnya terkandung berbagai jenis khazanah ilmu untuk dimanfaatkan oleh manusia yang bergelar khalifah dan juga hamba Allah S.W.T., juga mengandungi kisah-kisah umat terdahulu sebagai peringatan daripada Allah S.W.T. kepada manusia yang menghuni bumi ciptaan Allah S.W.T

Microbial production of food grade pigments – screening and metabolic pathway analysis

Unitl recently, the use of plant pigments as natural food colourantis expensive and uncompetitive to synthetic dyes due to their high production costs. Such disadvantages could be overcome with the development of microbial food grade pigments which are likely to cut down the high production cost, thus leading to a cheaper source of natural food colournats. The production of natural colourantsby microbial fermentation has a number of advantages over plant-based systems such as higher yeilds within a shorter period of time and no seasonal varations. We, therefore, have screened 285 microbial strains from our NewZealand environmental microorganism collection to find new sources of natural food grade pigments. Among those, 166 strains produced pigments when growing in liquid medium including 28 extracellular pigments and 90 intacellular pigments. HLPC results showed that 33 purified pigments were water soluble. Molecular indentification of 39 selected strains using ribosomal DNA sequencing showed the presence of representativrs from 19 different genera. Interestingly, a number of pigments have shown biological activity against filamentous fungi. We currently carrying out pigment stability tests on selected microbial strains. Futher to this study, metabolomics and metabolic engineering tools will be used for improvement of pigment yield of the best candidate strain with potential for industiral applications

Gamat or Timun Laut? Ossicle shapes of Holothuria (Merthensiothuria) leucospilota and Stichopus horrens for identification

Gamat is a local name for all species of family 3chopodidae. Genera of Stichopus and Thelenota are the two members of family Stichopodidae which can be found in Malaysia’s seawaters e.g. Stichopus horrens Selenka, 1867 and Thelenota anax. Gamat has been exploited for its body fluid extracts i.e. air gamat and lipid extracts i.e. minyak gamat. In line with the development of science and technology, modern-­‐formularised gamat-­‐based products sold by Malaysia’s companies e.g. Gamat eMas Sdn. Bhd., Nur Af Enterprise, Nutrifes Food & Beverages Industries Sdn. Bhd., and Luxor Network Sdn. Bhd. are also available in the markets. u S. horrens or Gamat Emas has been used as the main ingredient

Morphological and molecular identification of Holothuria (Merthensiothuria) leucospilota and Stichopus horrens from Pangkor Island, Malaysia

Kajian awal ini bertujuan untuk mengenalpasti satu spesies komersil gamat iaitu Stichopus horrens Selenka, 1867 dan satu spesies timun laut iaitu Holothuria (Mertensiothuria) leucospilota (Brandt, 1835) dari Pulau Pangkor, Perak, Malaysia dengan mengaplikasikan teknik-teknik morfologi berdasarkan bentuk-bentuk osikel dan teknik-teknik molekul menggunakan gen sitokrom c osidasi I (COI) mitokondria DNA (mtDNA). Di Malaysia, gamat didefinisikan sebagai spesies timun laut daripada famili Stichopodidae yang memiliki nilai-nilai perubatan manakala timun laut dirujukkan kepada spesies bukan gamat. Spesies S. horrens adalah amat popular di Pulau Pangkor sebagai bahan utama dalam penghasilan air gamat dan minyak gamat secara tradisional manakala H. leucospilota merupakan spesies paling dominan di Malaysia. Berbeza dengan kajian-kajian sebelum ini, bahagian dalaman tubuh iaitu pohon respirasi dan gastrousus telah disertakan dalam kajian ini untuk mendapatkan kesimpulan yang lebih baik berdasarkan morfologi. Keputusan-keputusan menunjukkan tiada osikel telah hadir di dalam gastrousus H. leucospilota dan ciri tersebut dicadangkan sebagai penanda diagnostik yang unik untuk spesies timun laut tersebut. Di samping itu, kehadiran rod berbentuk Y di dalam pohon respirasi S. horrens seterusnya menyokong potensi bahagian dalaman tubuh untuk mengenalpasti spesies gamat tersebut. Selanjutnya, analisis-analisis filogenetik gen COI mtDNA spesimen-spesimen timun laut tersebut menggunakan kaedah hubungkait jiran dan kaedah persamaan maksimum seterusnya mengesahkan status spesies H. leucospilota dan S. horrens dari Pulau Pangkor, Perak, Malaysia. Jujukan-jujukan gen COI mtDNA tersebut telah didaftarkan dengan GenBank, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), US National Library of Medicine (no. akses GenBank: KC405565-KC405568). Walaupun lebih banyak spesimen dari pelbagai lokasi diperlukan untuk menghasilkan keputusan-keputusan muktamad yang lebih baik, penemuan-penemuan semasa telah memberi gambaran yang lebih baik tentang kepentingan pendekatan-pendekatan yang saling lengkap-melengkapi iaitu teknik-teknik morfologi dan molekul dalam pengenalpastian kedua-dua spesies timun laut Malaysia tersebut

Phylogeny of sea cucumber (echinodermata: holothuroidea) as inferred from 16s mitochondrial rRNa gene sequences

This study aimed to determine phylogenetic relationship between and among selected species of sea cucumbers (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) using 16S mitochondrial ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene. Phylogenetic analyses of 37 partial sequences of 16S mitochondrial rRNA gene using three main methods namely neighbour joining (NJ), maximum parsimony (MP) and maximum likelihood (ML) showed the presence of five main genera of sea cucumbers: Molpadia from order Molpadiida and four genera of order Aspidochirotida namely Holothuria, Stichopus, Bohadschia and Actinopyga. All of the 17 species obtained from Malaysia distributed among the main genera except within Actinopyga. Interestingly, Holothuria excellens was out of Holothuria group causing Holothuria to be paraphyletic. High bootstrap value and consistent clustering made Molpadia, Stichopus, Bohadschia and Actinopyga monophyletic. The relationship of Actinopyga with the other genera was unclarified and Stichopus was sister to Molpadia. The latter finding caused the resolution at order level unclear. The pairwise genetic distance calculated using Kimura 2-parameter model further supported and verified findings from the phylogenetic trees. Further studies with more samples and different mitochondrial DNA genes need to be done to get a better view and verification on the molecular phylogeny of sea cucumber

Phylogeny of sea cucumber (echinodermata: holothuroidea) as inferred from 16s mitochondrial rRNa gene sequences

This study aimed to determine phylogenetic relationship between and among selected species of sea cucumbers (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) using 16S mitochondrial ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene. Phylogenetic analyses of 37 partial sequences of 16S mitochondrial rRNA gene using three main methods namely neighbour joining (NJ), maximum parsimony (MP) and maximum likelihood (ML) showed the presence of five main genera of sea cucumbers: Molpadia from order Molpadiida and four genera of order Aspidochirotida namely Holothuria, Stichopus, Bohadschia and Actinopyga. All of the 17 species obtained from Malaysia distributed among the main genera except within Actinopyga. Interestingly, Holothuria excellens was out of Holothuria group causing Holothuria to be paraphyletic. High bootstrap value and consistent clustering made Molpadia, Stichopus, Bohadschia and Actinopyga monophyletic. The relationship of Actinopyga with the other genera was unclarified and Stichopus was sister to Molpadia. The latter finding caused the resolution at order level unclear. The pairwise genetic distance calculated using Kimura 2-parameter model further supported and verified findings from the phylogenetic trees. Further studies with more samples and different mitochondrial DNA genes need to be done to get a better view and verification on the molecular phylogeny of sea cucumber

Species identification and molecular phylogenetics of processed sea cucumbers from Malaysian market based on 12s mitochondrial rRNA gene

Extensive processing of sea cucumber causes body deformation of the marine organism, hence causing difficulties in species identification of processed sea cucumbers. Due to the copresence of cases of unlabelled or mislabelled sea cucumber products in Malaysian markets and worldwide, a study was conducted to determine the species identities of processed sea cucumbers from selected Malaysian markets using non-protein-coding 12S mitochondrial rRNA gene. Phylogenetic analyses based on the distance-based Neighbour Joining method, and the character-based methods i.e. the Maximum Parsimony method, Maximum Likelihood method, and the Bayesian Analysis method of 81 ingroup sequences representing 63 processed sea cucumber specimens, 13 fresh and processed reference samples for species identification, and five fresh additional specimens from Teluk Nipah Beach, Pangkor Archipelago and Manukan Island, Sabah suggested the presence of three main clusters i.e. a gamat family cluster consisting of family Stichopodidae (Stichopus horrens, Stichopus vastus, and Thelenota anax) and two clusters of timun laut family comprising family Holothuriidae (Holothuria (Mertensiothuria) leucospilota, Holothuria (Metriatyla)scabra, Holothuria (Metriatyla) lessoni, Holothuria (Halodeima) atra, and Holothuria (Halodeima) edulis) and family Caudinidae (Acaudina molpadioides). The outcomes of this study also highlighted the availability of 40 new 12S mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences deposited in the GenBank that can be utilised by the enforcement agencies to monitor and overcome the issues of species substitution and product mislabelling of processed sea cucumber products in Malaysian markets