Asia, being the largest continent, both in its size and population is affected by different types of atmospheric aerosols. Also, owing to different local emissions/sources along with the long range ...transport mechanisms, there is a large variability in the distribution of different types of aerosols across the continent. Not only the effects are pertinent to the regional and global climate system, but the loadings also affect human health. Though there have been studies in the past focussing on columnar distribution of aerosol types over Asian region at continental and regional scales, studies focussed on regional vertical distribution of major aerosol types over different regions of Asia need attention. This paper presents the decadal (2007–16) vertical distribution of major aerosol components, i.e., dust, polluted dust and smoke over different parts of Asia as seen from the space-borne lidar, i.e., Cloud Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarisation (CALIOP) onboard Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO). Such a study can be useful in capacity building focussed on aerosol variability through remote sensing techniques.
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus is continuously evolving, and this poses a major threat to antibody therapies and currently authorized Coronavirus Disease 2019 ...(COVID-19) vaccines. It is therefore of utmost importance to investigate and predict the putative mutations on the spike protein that confer immune evasion. Antibodies are key components of the human immune system's response to SARS-CoV-2, and the spike protein is a prime target of neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) as it plays critical roles in host cell recognition, fusion, and virus entry. The potency of therapeutic antibodies and vaccines partly depends on how readily the virus can escape neutralization. Recent structural and functional studies have mapped the epitope landscape of nAbs on the spike protein, which illustrates the footprints of several nAbs and the site of escape mutations. In this review, we discuss (1) the emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants; (2) the structural basis for antibody-mediated neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 and nAb classification; and (3) identification of the RBD escape mutations for several antibodies that resist antibody binding and neutralization. These escape maps are a valuable tool to predict SARS-CoV-2 fitness, and in conjunction with the structures of the spike-nAb complex, they can be utilized to facilitate the rational design of escape-resistant antibody therapeutics and vaccines.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a newly emerging, highly transmissible, and pathogenic coronavirus in humans that has caused global public health emergencies and ...economic crises. To date, millions of infections and thousands of deaths have been reported worldwide, and the numbers continue to rise. Currently, there is no specific drug or vaccine against this deadly virus; therefore, there is a pressing need to understand the mechanism(s) through which this virus enters the host cell. Viral entry into the host cell is a multistep process in which SARS-CoV-2 utilizes the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike (S) glycoprotein to recognize angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors on the human cells; this initiates host-cell entry by promoting viral-host cell membrane fusion through large-scale conformational changes in the S protein. Receptor recognition and fusion are critical and essential steps of viral infections and are key determinants of the viral host range and cross-species transmission. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge on the origin and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and the roles of key viral factors. We discuss the structure of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of SARS-CoV-2 and its significance in drug discovery and explain the receptor recognition mechanisms of coronaviruses. Further, we provide a comparative analysis of the SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 S proteins and their receptor-binding specificity and discuss the differences in their antigenicity based on biophysical and structural characteristics.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In this paper, the decadal datasets available from the space-borne lidar, Cloud Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) onboard Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite ...Observations (CALIPSO) are analyzed in order to understand the spatial and vertical distributions of aerosols at a global scale. Decadal (September 2006–August 2016) Level 3 night time Standard All-sky data products, created using quality controlled Level 2 datasets are utilized in the study. Columnar aerosol properties are discussed in conjugation with vertical properties of the three major aerosol types i.e. dust, polluted dust and smoke. It is found that the global mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) amounts to 0.10, with AOD values of 0.13 and 0.09 for land and ocean respectively, during the last decade. Mean aerosol extinction coefficients are also reported for four altitude bins i.e. 0–1 km, 1–2 km, 2–3 km and 3–4 km above mean sea level (a.m.s.l.). It is observed that dust and smoke particles have stronger vertical transport compared to polluted dust particles, which are generally found to be confined within the lower altitudes. In order to observe the changes in aerosol loading over different parts of the globe, de-seasonalized trends of AOD and vertical extinction coefficients are computed using linear regression technique. Globally, the total columnar particle load shows a significant negative trend during the last decade. In particular, trends of total particle loading (AOD and extinction) are decreasing over North America, South America, East China and Australia. However, the smoke emissions (columnar and vertically distributed) have increased over India, Russia, North America, Australia and Central Africa. This is of concern in the context of rising temperatures accompanied with increasing wildfires throughout the globe. Additionally, enhanced levels of polluted dust over the developing regions of Africa and Asia are also revealed.
•Decadal trends of dust, polluted dust and smoke are reported.•Globally, smoke emissions have increased.•Dust levels have increased over North America during the last decade.•Decreasing polluted dust over America, Europe and East China
The farmers are approaching river/reservoir beds to produce crops and vegetables during the lean periods, especially post-monsoon, winter, and summer, for their livelihood in changing climatic ...scenarios. Comparing C fractions, C stocks, and microbial indices between the terrestrial (conventional agricultural land: CAL) and riparian zones (reservoir riparian zones: RSRZ and river riparian zones: RRZ) reveals that cultivating riparian zones is environmentally stressful and climatically vulnerable to livelihood practices. The moist riverbed conditions for cultivation result in the accumulation of residual biomass and the burial of soil organic matter. The C fractions showed decreasing trends as CAL > RSRZ > RRZ. The mean TOC stock was found high in the CAL soils (45.04 Mg C ha−1) than in the RRZ (40.65 Mg C ha−1) and RSRZ soils (38.01 Mg C ha−1). The labile C fraction (KMnO4-C) varied from 2.34 to 3.29 % of TOC, and the RSRZ and RRZ soils showed 14.50 % and 40.32 % less KMnO4-C than the CAL soils. The relationship between KMnO4-C and mineralizable C (Cmin) showed high potential for organic carbon stabilization in riparian soils. The microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and basal soil respiration (BSR) values were nearly half of the CAL in the RRZ soils indicating limited carbon substrate availability to the microbial decomposition. Low mineralization quotient (qM) and high metabolic quotient (qCO2) indicated stressful microbial utilization of labile TOC in the RRZ soils. The high carbon management index (CMI) showed the potential to store and sequester TOC in riparian soils. The artificial neural networks (ANN) were used to examine the impact of soil properties on the prediction efficiency of TOC stocks in the three farming zones.
•Carbon fractions in riparian soils were less than in conventional agriculture soils.•Low qM and high qCO2 in riparian soils showed less degree of C mineralization.•The holocoenotic labile C fractions were KMnO4-C and Cmin.•NLC showed high C stock prediction irrespective of agricultural zones.
API Integration using GraphQL Ambasht, Anshumali
International journal of computer trends and technology,
08/2023, Letnik:
71, Številka:
8
Journal Article
The threat of heavy metal pollution to environmental health is getting worldwide attention due to their persistence and non-biodegradable nature. Ineffectiveness of various physicochemical methods ...due to economical and technical constraints resulted in the search for a cost-effective and eco-friendly biological technique for heavy metal removal from the environment. The two effective biotic methods used are biosorption and bioaccumulation. A comparison between these two processes demonstrated that biosorption is a better heavy metal removal process than bioaccumulation. This is due to the intoxication of heavy metal by inhibiting their entry into the microbial cell. Genes and enzymes related to bioremoval process are also discussed. On comparing the removal rate, bacteria are surpassed by algae and fungi. The aim of this review is to understand the biotic processes and to compare their metal removal efficiency.
The present investigation was carried out to assess the diversity existing among the landraces of pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duch.) from North Eastern Himalayan region of India. Clustering analysis ...based on morphological and molecular traits exhibited high level of genetic diversity and grouped the pumpkin landraces into 5 major clusters. Maximum and minimum inter-cluster average D2 values obtained were 442.27 and 86.29, respectively. High degree of correlation was found between diversity obtained by morphological and molecular traits. The highest and lowest PIC values of SSR markers observed was 0.91 (OCM2) and 0.30 (OCM9) respectively and the Jaccard's similarity coefficient ranged from 0.51 to 0.92. The most divergent landraces obtained (GHP 1, GHP 26, GHP 43, GHP 51, GHP 52 GHP 56) from this study can be effectively utilized in future pumpkin breeding programme for development of new hybrid combinations.
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