Metabolomics is an emerging branch of "omics" and it involves identification and quantification of metabolites and chemical footprints of cellular regulatory processes in different biological ...species. The metabolome is the total metabolite pool in an organism, which can be measured to characterize genetic or environmental variations. Metabolomics plays a significant role in exploring environment-gene interactions, mutant characterization, phenotyping, identification of biomarkers, and drug discovery. Metabolomics is a promising approach to decipher various metabolic networks that are linked with biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. In this context, metabolomics-assisted breeding enables efficient screening for yield and stress tolerance of crops at the metabolic level. Advanced metabolomics analytical tools, like non-destructive nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), liquid chromatography mass-spectroscopy (LC-MS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and direct flow injection (DFI) mass spectrometry, have sped up metabolic profiling. Presently, integrating metabolomics with post-genomics tools has enabled efficient dissection of genetic and phenotypic association in crop plants. This review provides insight into the state-of-the-art plant metabolomics tools for crop improvement. Here, we describe the workflow of plant metabolomics research focusing on the elucidation of biotic and abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms in plants. Furthermore, the potential of metabolomics-assisted breeding for crop improvement and its future applications in speed breeding are also discussed. Mention has also been made of possible bottlenecks and future prospects of plant metabolomics.
In the present study a sequential process composed of electrocoagulation (EC) followed by electrooxidation (EO) was utilized at the laboratory scale to remove the chemical oxygen demand (COD) from ...wastewater generated in Iraqi vegetable oil refinery plant.in the EC, impacts of operating variables such as current density (10–30 mA cm-2) and pH (4–10),and EC time (30–90 min) on the COD removal (RE%) were investigated using response surface methodology (RSM) based on Box- Behnken design(BBD). a mathematical correlation that relates the operating factors with RE% was developed and its regression coefficient was 99.02% confirming the significant of the model. Response surface plots showed that RE% increased with increasing current density and time while it decreased with increasing pH. The optimum removal with a lower cost for EC process were achieved at current density of 30mA/cm2, pH of 4, and electrolysis time of 90 min in which RE% of 69.19% was obtained with requirement of 0.513kWh/kg COD as specific energy consumption (SEC). The effluent exit from EC was treated by EO for a period of 240min at a current density of 30mA/cm2 and an initial pH value of 4 to obtain RE% of 96% at SEC of 1.554 kWh/kg COD. Combining EC with EO resulted in a total RE% of 98.72% and a total SEC of 2.067 kWh/kg COD. Based on the results of present study, the applicability of a sequential electrocoagulation-electrooxidation process for treatment vegetable oil wastewaters is feasible.
•Sequential Electrocoagulation (EC) - Electrooxidation (EO) was utilized to treat vegetable oil refinery wastewater.•Impacts of current density, pH, and time on the COD removal (RE%) were investigated using response surface methodology (RSM.•At EC, RE% increased with increasing current density and time and decreased with increasing pH.•Combining EC with EO resulted in a total RE% of 98.72% and a total energy consumption of 2.067 kWh/kg COD.
Summary
Research on mycorrhizal symbiosis has been slowed by a lack of established study systems. To address this challenge, we have been developing Suillus, a widespread ecologically and ...economically relevant fungal genus primarily associated with the plant family Pinaceae, into a model system for studying ectomycorrhizal (ECM) associations. Over the last decade, we have compiled extensive genomic resources, culture libraries, a phenotype database, and protocols for manipulating Suillus fungi with and without their tree partners. Our efforts have already resulted in a large number of publicly available genomes, transcriptomes, and respective annotations, as well as advances in our understanding of mycorrhizal partner specificity and host communication, fungal and plant nutrition, environmental adaptation, soil nutrient cycling, interspecific competition, and biological invasions. Here, we highlight the most significant recent findings enabled by Suillus, present a suite of protocols for working with the genus, and discuss how Suillus is emerging as an important model to elucidate the ecology and evolution of ECM interactions.
Computer-aided diagnosis has become a necessity for accurate and immediate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) detection to aid treatment and prevent the spread of the virus. Numerous studies have ...proposed to use Deep Learning techniques for COVID-19 diagnosis. However, they have used very limited chest X-ray (CXR) image repositories for evaluation with a small number, a few hundreds, of COVID-19 samples. Moreover, these methods can neither localize nor grade the severity of COVID-19 infection. For this purpose, recent studies proposed to explore the activation maps of deep networks. However, they remain inaccurate for localizing the actual infestation making them unreliable for clinical use. This study proposes a novel method for the joint localization, severity grading, and detection of COVID-19 from CXR images by generating the so-called
infection maps
. To accomplish this, we have compiled the largest dataset with 119,316 CXR images including 2951 COVID-19 samples, where the annotation of the ground-truth segmentation masks is performed on CXRs by a novel collaborative human–machine approach. Furthermore, we publicly release the first CXR dataset with the ground-truth segmentation masks of the COVID-19 infected regions. A detailed set of experiments show that state-of-the-art segmentation networks can learn to localize COVID-19 infection with an F1-score of 83.20%, which is significantly superior to the activation maps created by the previous methods. Finally, the proposed approach achieved a COVID-19 detection performance with 94.96% sensitivity and 99.88% specificity.
AIM： To assess the clinical features, yield of the diagnostic tests and outcome of abdominal tuberculosis in non-HIV patients.
METHODS： Adult patients with discharge diagnosis of abdominal ...tuberculosis （based upon; positive microbiology, histo-pathology, imaging or response to trial of anti TB drugs） during the period 1999 to 2004 were analyzed. Patient＇s characteristics, laboratory investigations, radiological, endoscopic and surgical findings were evaluated. Abdominal site involved （intestinal, peritoneal, visceral, and nodal） and response to treatment was also noted.
RESULTS： There were 209 patients enrolled. One hundred and twenty-three （59%） were females. Symptoms were abdominal pain 294 （93%）, fever 234 （64%）, night sweats 99 （48%）, weight loss 98 （47%）, vomiting 75 （36%）, ascites 74 （35%）, constipation 64 （31%）, and diarrhea 25 （12%）. Sub-acute and acute intestinal obstruction was seen in 28 （13%） and 12 （11%） respectively. Radiological evidence of pulmonary tuberculosis was found in 134 （64%） patients. Basis of diagnosis of abdominal tuberculosis were radiology （Chest and barium X-Rays, Ultrasound and CT scan abdomen） in 111 （53%） and histo-pathology （tissue obtained during surgery, colonoscopy, CT or ultrasound guided biopsy, laparoscopy and upper gastro intestinal endoscopy） in 87 （42%） patients. Mycobacterium culture was positive in 6/87 （7%） patients and response to therapeutic trial of anti tubercular drugs was the basis of diagnosis in 5 （2.3%） patients. Predominant site of involvement by abdominal TB was intestinal in 103 （49%） patients, peritoneal in 87 （42%） patients, solid viscera in 10 （5%） and nodal in 9 （4%） patients. Response to medical treatment was found in 158 （76%） patients and additionally 35 （17%） patients also underwent surgery. In a 425 ± 120 d follow-up period 12 patients died （eight post operative） and no case of relapse was noted.
CONCLUSION： Abdominal TB has diverse and nonspecific symptomatology. No single test is adequate for diagnosis of abdominal tuberculosis in all patients. Abdominal TB in non-HIV patients remains an ongoing diagnostic dilemma requiring a high index of clinical suspicion.
Increasing agricultural productivity via modern breeding strategies is of prime interest to attain global food security. An array of biotic and abiotic stressors affect productivity as well as the ...quality of crop plants, and it is a primary need to develop crops with improved adaptability, high productivity, and resilience against these biotic/abiotic stressors. Conventional approaches to genetic engineering involve tedious procedures. State-of-the-art OMICS approaches reinforced with next-generation sequencing and the latest developments in genome editing tools have paved the way for targeted mutagenesis, opening new horizons for precise genome engineering. Various genome editing tools such as transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), and meganucleases (MNs) have enabled plant scientists to manipulate desired genes in crop plants. However, these approaches are expensive and laborious involving complex procedures for successful editing. Conversely, CRISPR/Cas9 is an entrancing, easy-to-design, cost-effective, and versatile tool for precise and efficient plant genome editing. In recent years, the CRISPR/Cas9 system has emerged as a powerful tool for targeted mutagenesis, including single base substitution, multiplex gene editing, gene knockouts, and regulation of gene transcription in plants. Thus, CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing has demonstrated great potential for crop improvement but regulation of genome-edited crops is still in its infancy. Here, we extensively reviewed the availability of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing tools for plant biotechnologists to target desired genes and its vast applications in crop breeding research.
Plant root-associated microbial symbionts comprise the plant rhizobiome. These microbes function in provisioning nutrients and water to their hosts, impacting plant health and disease. The plant ...microbiome is shaped by plant species, plant genotype, soil and environmental conditions, but the contributions of these variables are hard to disentangle from each other in natural systems. We used bioassay common garden experiments to decouple plant genotype and soil property impacts on fungal and bacterial community structure in the
rhizobiome. High throughput amplification and sequencing of 16S, ITS, 28S and 18S rDNA was accomplished through 454 pyrosequencing. Co-association patterns of fungal and bacterial taxa were assessed with 16S and ITS datasets. Community bipartite fungal-bacterial networks and PERMANOVA results attribute significant difference in fungal or bacterial communities to soil origin, soil chemical properties and plant genotype. Indicator species analysis identified a common set of root bacteria as well as endophytic and ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with
in different soils. However, no single taxon, or consortium of microbes, was indicative of a particular
genotype. Fungal-bacterial networks were over-represented in arbuscular mycorrhizal, endophytic, and ectomycorrhizal fungi, as well as bacteria belonging to the orders Rhizobiales, Chitinophagales, Cytophagales, and Burkholderiales. These results demonstrate the importance of soil and plant genotype on fungal-bacterial networks in the belowground plant microbiome.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly become a global health concern after its first known detection in December 2019. As a result, accurate and reliable advance warning system for the ...early diagnosis of COVID-19 has now become a priority. The detection of COVID-19 in early stages is not a straightforward task from chest X-ray images according to expert medical doctors because the traces of the infection are visible only when the disease has progressed to a moderate or severe stage. In this study, our first aim is to evaluate the ability of recent state-of-the-art Machine Learning techniques for the early detection of COVID-19 from chest X-ray images. Both compact classifiers and deep learning approaches are considered in this study. Furthermore, we propose a recent compact classifier, Convolutional Support Estimator Network (CSEN) approach for this purpose since it is well-suited for a scarce-data classification task. Finally, this study introduces a new benchmark dataset called Early-QaTa-COV19, which consists of 1065 early-stage COVID-19 pneumonia samples (very limited or no infection signs) labeled by the medical doctors and 12544 samples for control (normal) class. A detailed set of experiments shows that the CSEN achieves the top (over 97%) sensitivity with over 95.5% specificity. Moreover, DenseNet-121 network produces the leading performance among other deep networks with 95% sensitivity and 99.74% specificity.
Introduction
Short- and long-acting granulocyte-colony stimulating factors (G-CSFs) are approved for the reduction of febrile neutropenia. A systematic literature review was performed to identify ...randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and non-RCTs reporting the use of G-CSFs following chemotherapy treatment.
Methods
Medline
®
/Medline in-process, Embase
®
, and the Cochrane Library were searched for studies published between January 2003 and June 2016. A hand-search of relevant conference proceedings was conducted for meetings held between 2012 and 2016. Eligible studies were restricted to those reporting a direct, head-to-head comparison of short- versus long-acting G-CSFs for reduction of chemotherapy-induced febrile neutropenia. Risk-of-bias assessments were performed for full publications only.
Results
The search strategy yielded 4044 articles for electronic screening. Thirty-six publications were evaluated for the meta-analysis: 11 of 12 RCTs and 2 of 24 non-RCTs administered doses of the short-acting G-CSF filgrastim for ≥ 7 days. In RCT studies, there was no statistically significant difference in outcomes of interest between short- and long-acting G-CSFs. In non-RCTs, the overall risk was lower with long-acting G-CSF than with short-acting G-CSF for incidence of febrile neutropenia overall relative risk (RR) = 0.67,
P
= 0.023, hospitalizations (overall RR = 0.68,
P
< 0.05), and chemotherapy dose delays (overall RR = 0.68,
P
= 0.020).
Conclusions
Overall, the weight of evidence from RCTs indicates little difference in efficacy between the short- and long-acting G-CSFs if dosed according to recommended guidelines. There is some evidence for greater efficacy for long-acting G-CSFs in non-RCTs, which may be a result of under-dosing of short-acting G-CSFs in general practice in real-world usage.
Funding
Hospira Inc, which was acquired by Pfizer Inc in September 2015, and Pfizer Inc.
Extraction of prodigiosin using aqueous two phase system Jaffer, Zahraa Mohammed; Hameed, Khalid W.; Imran, Sahar Ghazi
IOP conference series. Materials Science and Engineering,
02/2021, Letnik:
1076, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Abstract
Aqueous two-phase system is a modified and amazing separation process of bioproducts in downstream since it keeps their properties. This method is able to give high recovery yield and high ...purity in a single step. Prodigiosin pigment was produced by Serratia marcescens in carbohydrate fermentation. It is the first time to extract the prodigiosin by aqueous two-phase system, where two types of system are applied; polymer/polymer and polymer/salt. The parameters studied on the recovery per cent and partition coefficient of prodigiosin are temperature, weight fraction of polymer in solution, molecular weight of polymer, weight fraction of salt in solution, and pH. The maximum recovery and partition coefficient of prodigiosin are obtained in the first system (PEG6000/Dextran) at temperature of 20°C, pH 6, weight fraction of PEG6000 is 0.22, weight fraction of Dextran is 0.15 while in the second system (PEG1500/ammonium sulfate) the maximum recovery and partition coefficient of the prodigiosin are obtained at temperature of 20°C, pH 5, weight fraction of salt is 0.15, and weight fraction of PEG1500 is 0.24.
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