فصلنامه ایمنی زیستی
سال نهم شماره 2 (تابستان 1395)

One of the main concerns for governments and most of the international organizations, especially in developing countries which have a high population growth rate, is food security and food safety. These two words are separate from each other and have two different concepts. Food security refers to the provision and constant availability of food for individuals of the society while food safety involves the concept of health food. One of the main reasons for the importance of food safety is the safety of aquatic animal health and their products which prevention of bioterrorism plays an important role. Bioterrorism is the deliberate release of biological agents. These include bacteria, viruses or toxins that may be in the form of natural or human manipulation. This method most be used in human soft wars to eliminate business rivals. In the present study, causes of creation, types and factors affecting decreasing or increasing bioterrorism were investigated.

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a valuable medicinal plant well-known for its exceptional nutritional properties and resistance to adverse environmental conditions due to its unique phytochemical compounds. Quinoa seed with 15% proteins and high quality of amino acid composition has been considered as a perfect food, and also a valuable source for vitamins, minerals and bioactive compounds such as polyphenols, phytosterols, and flavonoids. A single serving (40 g/day) of quinoa would deliver a large portion of Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of key nutrients and health-beneficial compounds to the consumer. According to FAO/WHO recommendations, quinoa protein can supply over 180% of the daily recommended intake of essential amino acids for adult nutrition with proper ratio of histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, and valine. Accordingly, quinoa seed can be introduced as nutriceutical composition for billions of human under malnutrition and pharmaceuitical shortage on the world and because of that, 2013 was named as quinoa year by FAO.  In this comprehensive paper it isaimedto introduce functional properties of quinoa and its advance in grank in food biosafety.

Drought is one of the most important environmental stresses that agricultural production in arid and semi-arid areas affected and reduce it. Reduce the effects of environmental stresses such as drought stress using methods such as irrigation, fertilizer and appropriate methods of implantation, are limited. Therefore, genetically modified plants to minimize the effect of environmental stresses come to important effort. Drought tolerance is not a trait genetically simple, but is complex quantitative trait with different aspects, for example is related with the relative water content, chlorophyll fluorescence, proline, the accumulation of abscisic acid and osmotic adjustment. Although selected through morphological and physiological traits of great importance, but the drought tolerance is a complex trait that requires to using of molecular methods to study the relevant mechanisms. In this regard proteomics can be a powerful tool for segregation, separation and detection of responsive proteins stress. Furthermore, by combining information obtained from this method genomics and bioinformatics, allowing the identification of the molecular mechanisms and genes involved in plant responses to stresses makes it. For importance of this issue, this paper is to study drought stress and its effect on the protein level, physiological and morphological in plants.

In the early stages of the emergence of new technologies, technological risks scrutiny and consideration of advantages and problems arising from it, often accompanied with insufficient knowledge about the subject and its unfair analysis. In recent decades, due to the significant progress in synthetic biology, discussions about the benefits and potential risks to human health and environment and the social, economic and ecological effects, has been intensified. Now the question that arises in the scientific and legal community that is there strategies to achieve an acceptable level of safety in relation to this technology? Since assessments conducted based on the precautionary principle, focus should be on the cases that maybe have severe complications and uncontrolled and irreversible effects. However, it should be noted that the closest technology to synthetic biology is genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms. To determine legal framework for activities in synthetic biology field, transgenic existing laws should be revised and according to differences and similarities between them, framework laws to be set for synthetic biology. In this article some aspects of safety, possible risks and legal structures for synthetic biology are described.

Nowadays consumers are aware of the importance of food additives on their health; demands for "natural" and" traditional" foods without any addition of chemical preservatives are increasing every day. On the otherhand resistance to bacterial antibiotics and adverse effects created by some of them have been led to concerns. Therefore, one of the alternatives to meet these needs is nonpathogenic microorganisms such as lactic acid bacteria bacteriocins that because of their “safe” (GRAS) status widely are used in food industry, medicine and animal health as bio-preservatives. That's why they are used in various cases such as increasing the shelf life, clinical antimicrobial activity and flora fermentation control. Thus, the present study is a review of the bacteriocins basic issues, technological applications and recent perspectives in development strategies.

Choline, a vitamin-like compound, is an essential nutrient and plays vital roles in important metabolic pathways. It is important for brain development especially in cellular growth that occurs during fetal development. It also participates in acetylcholine synthesis and its abnormal amount is a sign of disease conditions. Nowadays choline and acetylcholine are added to certain foods and therefore their quantitative determination is very important in food industries and clinical analysis. Chromatographic methods are usually used but tedious sample preparation, long separation time, use of high sample and mobile phase volumes and an experienced operator, limited their applications. In this regard, application of bio-sensors as a green method with the benefits of high sensitivity and convenient application have been noted. The hydrogen proxide as the product of enzymatic reaction is measured with optical or electrochemical methods. In this review, published researches (from 2000 to present) in the field of application of nano-particles in the design of this biosensors and determination of choline and acetylcholine has been reviewed. Application of nano-materials cause more enzyme immobilization with better stability and bioactivity, improve the electron transfer and decrease the resistance, and as a result enhancement in the figure of merits of the method.

Cytokines are protein or glycoprotein components that play an important role in inflammation and its regulation. Pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines are two groups of these components in which a dynamic equilibrium is essential to keep the body homeostasis. In the autoinflammatory disease pathology, it has been revealed that the balance between these components is disrupted and shifted to the pro-inflammatory cytokines. Therefore, using anti-inflammatory cytokines is one of the best method for inhibition of the inflammation and treatment for these diseases. In this review, study cytokines and methods of their inhibition were mentioned. This study showed that there are five general methods for the inhibition of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are used in the treatment of some diseases. It is believed that the use of these methods can open the doors of a new way for treatment of autoinflammatory diseases.

As the number of applications of carbon nanotubes (CNT) in the field of nanomedicine is growing quickly (imaging, drug delivery, scaffolds for tissue engineering), questions are raised about their potential toxicity. Because their annual production is now reaching hundreds of tons per year, their application in composite materials are becoming a reality. Dissemination in the environment could also happen during different steps of their life cycle, from their production to their processing, use and finally during disposal or recycling. We will review in this paper the state of the art in the field of toxicity and ecotoxicity of carbon nanotubes and try to highlight some recommendations.

Regarding to the potential adverse environmental effects of chemical insecticides, some alternative approaches like biological control agents have been proposed to address this problem. One of the promising alternative is use of Entomopathogenic Bacteria such as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). During sporulation, Bt produces crystalline inclusion proteins comprising different groups of cry and cyt toxins. Cry proteins target insects in the orders Lepidoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera and Hymenopterans as well as nematodes. High toxicity to Diptera has been reported for Cyt proteins. As individual Cry toxin has a defined spectrum of insecticidal activity, usually restricted to a few species in one particular order, recently researchers have been reported a novel Bacillus thuringiensis vegetative insecticidal protein (VIP) with a wide spectrum of activities against lepidopteran insects. Besides the Cry and Cyt proteins, which are the focus of this review, Bt produces various virulent factors including secreted insecticidal protein toxins (exotoxins). Strain engineering efforts have continued to extend the Bt host range.

Strain improvement led to the replacement of many of the early products with new Bt strains that were more potent than their predecessors, and the search for new and better strains continues to this day. Transgenic crop plants (Bt crops) have been commercialized that express several Cry and/or cyt from Bt. These plants are resistant against a wide range of insect species. This strategy has several advantages over chemical pesticides that accepted and adapted by many developed and developing countries.