The human intestine is home of an almost inconceivable large number of microorganisms. The human gut microbiota can therefore be pictured as an organ placed within a host organism. The human gut microbiome, which in total may contain >100 times the number of genes present in our genome, endows us with functional features that we did not have to evolve ourselves.
”A construção da Biblioteca Joanina parece ter obedecido a dois propósitos claros: um rei que quis eternizar-se e uma Universidade que necessitava de um espaço para guardar os seus livros.(...)Ao escrever agora sobre a Biblioteca Joanina, com critério e desenvolvimento, Carlos Fiolhais revela a erudição e o espírito inquisitivo que bem lhe conhecemos de muitos outros textos e que faze…
Evidence for the potential role of organ specific cardiovascular renin–angiotensin systems (RAS) has been demonstrated experimentally and clinically with respect to certain cardiovascular and renal diseases. These findings have been supported by studies involving pharmacological inhibition during ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, cardiac failure; hypertension associated with l…
Global concern about climate change caused by the exploitation of fossil fuels is encouraging the use of renewable energies. For instance, the European Union aims to be climate neutral by 2050. Biogas is an interesting renewable energy source due to its high calorific value. Today, biogas is mainly used for the production of electricity and heat by a combined heat and power engine. However, bef…
Biotechnology is the scientific field of studying and applying the most efficient methods and techniques to get useful end-products for the human society by using viable micro-organisms, cells, and tissues of plants or animals, or even certain functional components of their organisms, that are grown in fully controlled conditions to maximize their specific metabolism inside fully automatic bior…
Algae biomass has enormous potential to produce fuels and value-added products. Algae-derived biofuels and bioproducts offer great promise in contributing to U.S. energy security and in mitigating the environmental concerns associated with conventional fuels. Algae's ability to grow in low quality water/wastewater and to accumulate lipids has encouraged scientists to investigate algae as a medi…
Despite the vast and increasing scientific literature on the treatment of malicious diseases such as cancer, we are still far to accomplish most of the current unmet clinical desiderata. A special interest in the biomedical field has been recently directed towards "theranostic" devices, aiming at combining diagnostic and therapeutic functionalities into a single platform, and thus enabling both…
Polymers are the largest and most versatile class of biomaterials, being extensively applied for therapeutic applications. From natural to synthetic polymers, the possibilities to design and modify their physical-chemical properties make these systems of great interest in a wide range of biomedical applications as diverse as drug delivery systems, organ-on-a-chip, diagnostics, tissue engineerin…
Rice provides staple food for more than 50% of the world's population and is an important crop in the world. With the new technologies such as high-throughput genome sequencing and integrated "-omis" methods applied in rice researches, great advancements have been made. This book was aimed to show a glance of new advancements in the international rice researches. The first section of the book i…
This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researcher…