Acetic acid bacteria (AAB) are the important microorganisms for humans: Humans has the long history to utilize AAB for vinegar production. Vinegar is made from alcohols. Difference of raw materials and climate leads to form the variety of food culture at each region.In Japan, vinegar was introduced from Korea in 4^th Century. Because eat-meat was prohibited from the ancient ages, unique food culture came into existence: to eat fish and vegetables with addition of seasonings. Vinegar was used as a seasoning. As times go by, typical Japanese foods such as ‘namasu’ and ‘sushi’ appeared. Globally, many kinds of vinegar were born in the ancient civilization. In the Middle Ages of Europe, vinegar was used for preservation of foods or disinfection. Also in Asia, vinegar is important for appetite increase and preservation. Nata-de-coco is also a fermented food by AAB.Physiological properties of AAB are strong oxidation ability by membrane-bound oxidases and pellicle formation ability which retain the cell on the surface of the liquid culture. These two properties are involved in the survival strategy of AAB in the natural environment. AAB prohibit the growth of other bacteria by producing the harmful substance such as acetic acid, and then acquire the resistance to the substances and start to consume them. AAB have the very simple and annoying strategy, in which AAB make the surroundings for them, with the cost of their own growth.

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CRISPR/Cas system, widely conserved in Bacteria and Archaea, is regard as an adaptive immune system that efficiently cleaves foreign DNA invading cells, such as bacteriophage and plasmids. Recent studies showed that CRISPR/Cas system not only works for the immune system but also plays crucial roles in virulence, pathogenicity, survival and evolution of bacteria. In this review, we outline the role of CRISPR/Cas system in bacterial survival strategy with our research evidences. In addition, we briefly introduce recent advancement of genome editing applications using CRISPR/Cas system.

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The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) entered into force on 29th December, 1993. CBD stipulates ABS principles such as “sovereign right of States”, “prior informed consent” (PIC) and “mutually agreedterms” (MAT). More recently, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the CBD entered into force on 12th October, 2014. The Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement which aims at sharing the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way. The Nagoya Protocol obligates both provider countries and user countries. In this review, I introduce the ABS principles under the CBD and the framework of the Nagoya Protocol and outline the present situations and difficulties of implementing the Nagoya Protocol.

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There are many prerequisites for NGS data analysis on Linux system. We describe basic usage and commands on Linux environment. This includes the setting of Bio-Linux as a virtual machine, shared folders, and understanding of hardware requirements for NGS analysis. We show how to get a Lactobacillus genome sequences on Ensembl database and transcriptome data (bzipped FASTQ files) on DDBJ SRA. Many tasks on NGS analysis can effectively be performed by combining some Linux command line facilities, such as pipe and redirection.

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