Ravishankar Gokare

• MSc., Ph.D
• Vice President and Professor at Dayananda Sagar Institutions

Due to population explosion, unplanned industrialization, urbanization, and unabated agricultural practices, water pollution by recalcitrant toxic substances has emanated to be a grave disquiet in the world. Among them, heavy metals (HMs) are toxic and persistent nonbiodegradable low-concentration metal portions that exert pernicious impacts on aqu...

Lutein, a yellow xanthophyll carotenoid, is increasingly recognized for its nutraceutical benefits, particularly in protecting the retina’s macula from age-related degeneration. Microalgae are a promising source of lutein, which can be a primary product or a coproduct in biorefineries. Certain microalgae exhibit lutein levels (up to 1.7%) surpassin...

To enhance the nutraceutical value and preservation of mushrooms, this study focused on augmenting two widely consumed mushroom varieties in India namely the Button Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) and Oyster Mushroom (Agaricus bisporus). These mushrooms were subjected to UV light exposure to evaluate their impact on phytochemical content, including...

The need for plant-based meat analogs (PBMAs) is warranted to reduce meat consumption and also to cater to the demands of pro-vegetarian or vegan populations who are looking for new products of choice. Moreover, the increasing population excessively depending on animal products for food is unsustainable and also will burden the planet with excess d...

Concerns about the environmental effects of livestock production and the health effects of consuming red and processed meat are driving up demand for meat substitutes. To produce meat analogs with appropriate nutritional and sensory qualities, two types of materials can be used viz., microalgae and fungus. High concentrations of proteins, omega-3 f...

Vegan diets preclude the availability of some of the essential fatty acids supplied by foods of animal origin. Significantly, eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acids are long-chain (LC)-omega − 3 (n − 3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), widely known for preventing a variety of metabolic diseases. In addition to vegan-food supplem...

Human heparan sulfatase-2 (HSULF-2) is an oncoprotein overexpressed in the surface of all types of tumor cells and its activity plays a critical role in cancer survival and progression. Our previous studies have shown that bael fruit extract, containing marmesin and marmelosin, inhibits the HSULF-2 activity and kills breast tumor cells, but the mec...

The renewable biofuels invention has caught substantial attention worldwide over the last decades. Edible and non-edible sources of biofuels have witnessed major changes in the approaches in the form of three generations. The first-generation biofuels, refer to liquid fuels derives from starchy food crops and vegetable oils, and these are the renew...

Bio-economy is a primitive economic sector, and an increasing bioenergy production by biotechnology transforms to the newest one. Renewable biofuel is the keystone to the current and future bio-economy. Mainly, bio-economy is termed as a set of economic activities connecting the invention, development, utilization and production of biological produ...

During the current era of industrialization, urbanization and modernization, globally the world is facing the need for renewable energy as harbinger of economic growth and social development. Moreover, increasing populations and increasing lifestyle demands are exerting adverse effects on nature, incessantly causing ecological pressures. In respons...

Astaxanthin is one of the most effective and potent anti-oxidants astaxanthin is also a natural source for pigmentation in several aquatic organisms. Its utility to impart bright red coloration in farmed aquaculture animals is well recognized. In addition, astaxanthin has potential benefits to aquaculture species such as increasing their growth, su...

The antioxidant and food pigment astaxanthin (AX) can be produced by several microorganisms, in auto- or heterotrophic conditions. Regardless of the organism, AX concentrations in culture media are low, typically about 10–40 mg/L. Therefore, large amounts of nutrients and water are necessary to prepare culture media. Using low-cost substrates such...

Macroalgae are a fascinating and diverse group of organisms broadly known as ‘seaweeds’, living in the marine environment. In terms of total market value, the macroalgae-based food industry is estimated to be around USD 5 billion per year and the global macroalgae market is projected to reach a value of USD 17.59 billion by 2021 (Energy 2019). Macr...

Marine plant life is an abundant source of nutrients that enhance the daily diet. In recent years, consuming diets rich in seaweeds or their extracts have been shown to provide health benefits due to being rich in macronutrients, micronutrients and nutraceuticals. The commercial value of seaweeds for human consumption is increasing annually, and so...

Marine resources are a rich reservoir of bioactive phytochemicals with therapeutic applications. Among them, carotenoids are the primary natural pigments found in marine algae, seaweeds and other aquatic seafood. Generally, carotenoids are classified as hydrocarbon carotenes, composed of only carbon and hydrogen (lycopene, alpha-carotene, and β-car...

Marine plant life is an abundant source of nutrients that enhance the daily diet. In recent years, consuming diets rich in seaweeds or their extracts have been shown to provide health benefits due to being rich in macronutrients, micronutrients and nutraceuticals. The commercial value of seaweeds for human consumption is increasing annually, and so...

Marine macroalgae is a propitious resource of bioactive compounds and the production of the bioactive compound is a general characteristic of macroalgae to fight off microbial colonizers, bio-fouling organisms and grazers. Factually, a plenty of compounds that possess diverse bioactivities such as anti-microbial, anti-biofilm, anti-fouling have bee...

Seaweeds grow in a surplus amount in water bodies, out of which a bulk of marine algae are palatable and safe for human use. Edible seaweeds are composed of multiple vital nutrients such as amino acids, vitamins, minerals, omega-3 fatty acids, and bioactive molecules. Moreover, the ubiquity of seaweeds across every climatic zone along with its gene...

A prominent feature of algae is their versatile metabolism allowing them to synthesize a broad spectrum of molecules with beneficial effects on many aspects of human body functioning. This is in line with the current understanding that many stress-induced deleterious processes in the human body and the photosynthetic cell are mediated by the same m...

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a life-threatening metabolic disorder that possibly leads to serious health conditions. T2DM is characterized by hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia. Despite their side effects, synthetic drugs remain the core concept of treatment of type-2 DM. However, natural ingredients e.g., fucoidans were investigated to possibl...

Important advancements in seaweed production have driven the search for potential alternative molecules with great biotechnological interest. Several seaweed species have been cultivated worldwide and are exploited as a source of platform chemicals and specialty molecules such as polysaccharides. Seaweed polysaccharides have presented several appli...

Government of Mauritius has newly embarked on a new sector for the economy, namely the blue economy. Aquaculture is key among the various activities identified for future development. Not only will it represent a new income and employment generating activity, but it will also contribute to national food security. Mauritius has a seaweeds diversity...

The areal productivity and lipid yield of algal cultures created an expectation for algal biofuels, which is yet to be materialized; the projected prices for algal liquid fuels make them still uncompetitive. However, the market for microalgae products is growing in size and diversity, primarily for nutritional biomasses such as Spirulina or Chlorel...

Isoflavones are secondary metabolites that represent the most abundant category of plant polyphenols. Dietary soy, kudzu, and red clover contain primarily genistein, daidzein, glycitein, puerarin, formononetin, and biochanin A. The structural similarity of these compounds to β-estradiol has demonstrated protection against age-related and hormone-de...

Global Perspectives on Astaxanthin: From Industrial Production to Food, Health, and Pharmaceutical Applications explores the range of practical applications for this molecule, focusing on nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical products, along with food and feed. This volume brings together the most relevant research, background and future...

Microalgae can be used as a source of alternative food, animal feed, biofuel, fertilizer, cosmetics, nutraceuticals and for pharmaceutical purposes. The extraction of organic constituents from microalgae cultivated in the different nutrient compositions is influenced by microalgal growth rates, biomass yield and nutritional content in terms of lipi...

Currently regarded as the second most important carotenoid in terms of global market value, the red-orange liposoluble diketocarotenoid—astaxanthin—is a valuable pigment renowned for its outstanding antioxidant activity and with its numerous biological activities. It is widely used in various industries including feed, food, pharmaceutical, nutrace...

Astaxanthin (3,3′-dihydroxy-β,β-carotene-4,4-dione) is a known to be valuable carotenoid with strong antioxidant, which has been extensively used in various industries (such as aquaculture, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and food). There have been two major sources of astaxanthin: chemical (synthetic) and biological (natural) source. In nature, ast...

Algae-based astaxanthin is a valuable red keto-carotenoid with multiple biofunctions and widely applied in healthy food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industry with fast-growing demands in global market. However, the present cost of natural astaxanthin production from microalga Haematococcus pluvialis is still relatively high. The unique green micro...

Astaxanthin, a ketocarotenoid and a potent antioxidant, has multiple applications in aquaculture, nutraceutical, cosmetic, food, and pharmaceutical industries. The demand for natural astaxanthin is increasing owing to its beneficial effects over synthetic one. Commercial production of astaxanthin from potential natural sources has been established...

Astaxanthin, the most powerful natural antioxidant compound, suffers from poor water solubility and low bioavailability, due to its lipophilic chemical structure. Size reduction of these functional lipid compounds to nanoranges by their incorporations into nanosized delivery systems can considerably resolve their solubility problems and improve the...

Industry, agriculture, and residential areas generate increasing volumes of waste streams enriched with organic pollutants. Without proper treatment, they threaten the environment but can be valorized with suitable microalgal biotechnologies. Although their development has a long history, recent years are marked with a boom of research in this fiel...

Endophytes are the bacterial and fungal forms of organisms living within the plant system causing no ill effects to the hosts. They asymptomatically live in the cellular environment in the plants carrying out various complicated functions such as production of secondary metabolites and signaling molecules coupled to the responses of various externa...

Introduction Figure 1: Emerging contaminants entering aquatic ecosystem and their effects on human. Foot note: Image source from web. Abstract The current chapter deals with different emerging contaminants that are present in aquatic ecosystem and pose a potential threat to the aquatic organisms inhabiting there. Emerging contaminants may be many m...

Microalgae are rich source of various bioactive molecules such as carotenoids, lipids, fatty acids, hydrocarbons, proteins, carbohydrates, amino acids, etc. and in recent year's carotenoids from algae gained commercial recognition in the global market for food and cosmeceutical applications. However, the production of carotenoids from algae is not...

Soybean (Glycine max) is highly valued source of protein and vegetable oil with several health benefits such as low plasma cholesterol and preventing cancer. Cancer accounts for 10% of total death worldwide, which requires superior therapeutic strategies. Isoflavones are a class of plant-derived compounds, which is mainly produced by Fabaceae famil...

The enhanced interest in carotenoid research arises partly because of their application in the food and health industries and partly because of the necessity to find a commercially viable natural source for their mass production. The bottlenecks in finding a natural source of carotenoids which can compete with the synthetic products is the mass pro...

Current Understanding of Endophytes: Their Relevance, Importance, and Industrial Potential. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318731345_Current_Understanding_of_Endophytes_Their_Relevance_Importance_and_Industrial_Potential [accessed Feb 05 2018]. Endophytes are microorganisms which livein endogenous association with host pla...

The genetic manipulation of Capsicum has been unsuccessful, and a large bottleneck to transferring the desired genes is due to the difficulty in regenerating whole plants through tissue culture because of its highly recalcitrant and high genotype specificity. This study aimed to investigate and establish rapid shoot regeneration from the proximal e...

Algae are photosynthetic organisms, the primary producers of biomass that have been the basis of sustenance of a large number of live forms dependent on algae as the primary source of food. They also play a role in scavenging minerals and molecules from the environment, which will be of benefit to humans and the ecosystem, often removing them from...

Salacia sps is prominent plant in the domain of medicinal plant with varied benefits for several ailments. Salacia sps contains abundant range of phytochemicals (secondary metabolites) like Salacinol, Katnanol, Mangiferin, Poly phenolic, Tannins and many more Salacia sps possess Antimicrobial, Antifungal, Antimalarial, Anticancer, Antiobesity, Anti...

Dunaliella is a commercially important marine alga producing high amount of β-carotene. The use of Dunaliella as a potential transgenic system for the production of recombinant proteins has been recently recognized. The present study reports for the first time the metabolic engineering of carotenoid biosynthesis in Dunaliella salina for ketocaroten...

Microalgae accumulate important biofuel precursors such as fatty acids and hydrocarbons. Identification of microalgal strains with ideal fuel quality precursor profile is important during bioprospection studies. In this direction, thirty two freshwater green microalgae were characterized for their biomass productivity, fatty acid and hydrocarbon co...

Effect of isolated astaxanthin (ASX) and astaxanthin esters (ASXEs) from green microalga-Haematococcus pluvialis on hepatotoxicity and antioxidant activity against carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) induced toxicity in rats was compared with synthetic astaxanthin (SASX). ASX, ASXEs, and SASX, all dissolved in olive oil, fed to rats with 100 and 250 μg/kg...

Astaxanthin, a high value ketocarotenoid used in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries is mainly produced from green alga, Haematococcus pluvialis. It is biosynthesized by the action of key enzyme, β-carotene ketolase (BKT) on β-carotene through intermediates echinenone and canthaxanthin. In this study, the (-carotene ketolase (bkt) gene...

Medicinal plants are used since ancient times for treating several human ailments. Salacia sps belong to family Celastacea have prominent place in plant based medicine because it is used in management of diabetes and obesity. Salacia sps contain salacinol, katnanol, mangiferin are active principles which inhibit α-glucosidase enzyme and slow down t...

Radical scavenging activity and total phenolic content in seeds of five Bulgarian soybean varieties were analyzed in relation to different types of the extraction solvent. The extraction solvents used were acetonitrile acidified with HCl and 80% methanol. The amount of phenolic compounds in the extracts was estimated by Folin–Ciocalteu reagent. 2,2...

Supercritical carbon dioxide (SCCO2) extraction and fractionation of Spirulina platensis was carried out to obtain functional compounds with antioxidant, antimicrobial and enzyme inhibitory activities. Extraction of SCCO2 was carried out using 200 g of Spirulina powder at 40 ºC under 120 bar pressure with CO2 flow rate of 1.2 kg h−1. SCCO2 fraction...

The world is facing lack of alternative fuels. The demand for alternate energy is increasing every day and concurrently the depletion of fossil fuels has been so rapid that it could lead to energy crisis in the future. The energy production from photosynthetic micro-organisms such as algae is the solution to this issue, which is providing an eco-fr...

There is currently much interest in biological active compounds derived from natural resources, especially compounds that can efficiently act on molecular targets, which are involved in various diseases. Astaxanthin (3,3'-dihydroxy-β, β'-carotene-4,4'-dione) is a xanthophyll carotenoid, contained in Haematococcus pluvialis, Chlorella zofingiensis,...

Dunaliella bardawil, a green alga accumulates high amount of β-carotene under stress conditions. This organism has been exploited for β-carotene at industrial scale. In the present work, various metabolic inhibitors like diphenylamine (DPA), nicotine, basta, glyphosate, DCMU [3-(3',4'-dichlophenyl)-1,1-dimethylurea] and caffeine were used in autotr...

Plants produce diverse secondary plant products that are triggered by a wide range of abiotic factors, such as drought, salinity, UV light, temperature, and cold stress, to cope with environmental changes. Global changes in environmental conditions due to human activities result in elevated carbon dioxide (CO2). Alterations in ozone, UV light, and...

Caffeine biosynthesis involves sequential methylation of the purine ring by the transfer of methyl group from the methyl donor S-adenosyl methionine. Genes that code for the individual methyl transferase have a high degree of sequence homology. To achieve decaffeination by genetic engineering of coffee, the effect and efficiency of different post-t...

Isoflavone content in soybean seeds was enhanced by the elicitor-mediated approach under field conditions through the floral application of abiotic elicitors-salicylic acid, methyl jasmonate and biotic elicitors-Aspergillus niger and Rhizopus oligosporus. Among isoflavones, daidzein and glycitein were found to be highly responsive to elicitors, wit...

Moringa oleifera is a less used, drought-tolerant tropical plant, rich in nutritionally and nutraceutically important bioactive compounds. It is native to India and now under cultivation in many countries, but no data is available on genetic variability. Three DNA marker techniques, i.e., random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), inter simple sequen...

Five indigenous microalgal strains of Scenedesmus, Chlorococcum, Coelastrum, and Ankistrodesmus genera, isolated from Indian fresh water habitats, were studied for carbon-dioxide tolerance and its effect on growth, lipid and fatty acid profile. Scenedesmus dimorphus strain showed maximum growth (1.5g/L) and lipid content (17.83% w/w) under CO2 supp...

Stevioside is an ent-kaurene type diterpenoid glycoside isolated from leaves of Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni. Leaves of this plant produce zero-calorie diterpene glycosides (stevioside and rebaudioside), a non-nutritive, high-potency sweetener. Stevioside content in leaves will vary in field grown plants and is also influenced by agroclimatic conditio...

Astaxanthin mono (AXME), di (AXDE) esters were characterized and examined for anticancer potency with total carotenoids (TC) and astaxanthin (AX) against UV-DMBA induced skin cancer model in rat. At 200 μg/kg b.w., AXDE and AXME reduced UV-DMBA induced tumor incidences up to 96% and 88% respectively when compared to those of AX (66%) and TC (85%)....

Published article: Saini et al. (2013), Augmentation of major isoflavones in Glycine max L. through the elicitor-mediated approach. Acta Bot. Croat. 72 (2), 311–322, 2013, DOI: 10.2478/v10184-012-0023-7

Annatto is one of the important natural food colourant widely used in dairy industry. The efficiency of polyamines on augmentation of annatto pigment production in field cultivated Bixa orellana L. (Achiote) crop has been investigated. Analysis of annatto pigment profile in seeds of harvested fruits indicates an increase in annatto pigment content...

Capsaicinoid biosynthesis involves the participation of two substrates viz. vanillylamine and C(9)-C(11) fatty acid moieties. Vanillylamine which is a derivative of vanillin is synthesized through a transaminase reaction in the phenylpropanoid pathway of capsaicinoid synthesis. Here we report the functional validation of earlier reported putative a...

Development of a reproducible, versatile and efficient in vitro plant regeneration system is highly warranted for Indian soybean varieties for their mass multiplication in view of their commercial significance. Accordingly a protocol for direct shoot organogenesis in soybean variety JS 335 has been developed. Using cotyledonary node explants signif...

In vitro propagation of Rivina humilis L. was attempted through proliferation of axillary shoots and shoot tips obtained from mature plants. The shoot tips and nodal shoot segments exhibited 70 and 80% shoot initiation when cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) basal medium supplemented with 4.44 μM 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP)+2.85 μM indole-3-acetic...