•Berberis asiatica fruits as a source of natural phenolic compounds were explored.•Extraction optimization using five variables at three levels were applied.•Optimal conditions for all responses were ...standardized.•Six antioxidant phenolic compounds were identified at optimal conditions.•The experimental values were in close agreement with predicted values.
This study for the first time designed to optimize the extraction of phenolic compounds and antioxidant potential of Berberis asiatica fruits using response surface methodology (RSM). Solvent selection was done based on the preliminary experiments and a five-factors-three-level, Central Composite Design (CCD). Extraction temperature (X1), sample to solvent ratio (X3) and solvent concentration (X5) significantly affect response variables. The quadratic model well fitted for all the responses. Under optimal extraction conditions, the dried fruit sample mixed with 80% methanol having 3.0 pH in a ratio of 1:50 and the mixture was heated at 80°C for 30min; the measured parameters was found in accordance with the predicted values. High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analysis at optimized condition reveals 6 phenolic compounds. The results suggest that optimization of the extraction conditions is critical for accurate quantification of phenolics and antioxidants in Berberis asiatica fruits, which may further be utilized for industrial extraction procedure.
Microalgae have grabbed huge attention as a potential feedstock for biofuel production in response to the rise in energy consumption and the energy crisis. In the present study, indigenous microalgal ...strains were isolated from four freshwater lakes in the Kumaun region, Uttarakhand, India. Based on growth and lipid profiles, the four best-performing isolates were selected for further experiments. Initial identification of isolates was done by morphological observations, which were further validated by molecular identification using ITS sequencing. The screened cultures were subjected to abiotic stress conditions (varying concentrations of nitrogen and different temperatures) to monitor the biomass, lipid accumulation, and biochemical compositions (chlorophyll and carotenoids). The quantification of fatty acids was checked
via
gas chromatographic analysis. The strains were identified as KU_MA3
Chlamydopodium starrii
, KU_MA4
Tetradesmus nygaardii
, KU_MA5
Desmodesmus intermedius
, and KU_MA6
Tetradesmus nygaardii
. KU_MA3
Chlamydopodium starrii
showed the best results in terms of growth and lipid production at 21 °C and 0.37 g/L NaNO
2
concentration. The percentage of fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) attained >80% and met the standard for biodiesel properties. The strain has the potential to attain higher biomass and accumulate higher lipid content, and after some more studies, it can be used for upscaling processes and large-scale biodiesel production.
COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 is a current global challenge and urgent discovery of potential drugs to combat this pandemic is a need of the hour. 3-chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease (3CLpro) ...enzyme is the vital molecular target against the SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, in the present study, 1528 anti-HIV1compounds were screened by sequence alignment between 3CLpro of SARS-CoV-2 and avian infectious bronchitis virus (avian coronavirus) followed by machine learning predictive model, drug-likeness screening and molecular docking, which resulted in 41 screened compounds. These 41 compounds were re-screened by deep learning model constructed considering the IC
values of known inhibitors which resulted in 22 hit compounds. Further, screening was done by structural activity relationship mapping which resulted in two structural clefts. Thereafter, functional group analysis was also done, where cluster 2 showed the presence of several essential functional groups having pharmacological importance. In the final stage, Cluster 2 compounds were re-docked with four different PDB structures of 3CLpro, and their depth interaction profile was analyzed followed by molecular dynamics simulation at 100 ns. Conclusively, 2 out of 1528 compounds were screened as potential hits against 3CLpro which could be further treated as an excellent drug against SARS-CoV-2.
Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a vector-borne disease caused by the digenetic protozoan parasite Leishmania donovani complex. So far there is no effective vaccine available against VL. The DDX3 ...DEAD-box RNA Helicase (Hel67) is 67 kDa protein which is quite essential for RNA metabolism, amastigote differentiation, and infectivity in L. major and L. infantum. To investigate the role of Hel67 in the L. donovani, we created L. donovani deficient in the Hel67. Helicase67 null mutants (LdHel67
) were not able to differentiate as axenic amastigotes and were unable to infect the hamster. So, we have analyzed the prophylactic efficacy of the LdHel67
null mutant in hamsters. The LdHel67
null mutant based candidate vaccine exhibited immunogenic response and a higher degree of protection against L. donovani in comparison to the infected control group. Further, the candidate vaccine displayed antigen-specific delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) as well as strong antibody response and NO production which strongly correlates to long term protection of candidate vaccine against the infection. This study confirms the potential of LdHel67
null mutant as a safe and protective live attenuated vaccine candidate against visceral leishmaniasis.
In this study, we utilized an untargeted NMR metabolomics approach to identify the vector response in terms of metabolic profiling after temperature and insecticide exposure in comparison with the ...control. Clearly, temperature and insecticide exposure cause changes in the underlying metabolism, and the NMR metabolomic profile enables a direct examination of the immediate response of the vector to cope up with these changes. The present study was designed in four parts: A-Aedes aegypti were exposed to 40 °C for one-hour, DDT-4%, malathion-5%, and deltamethrin-0.05% separately and, part B-D; one-hour exposure at 35 °C and 40 °C temperatures followed by one-hour exposure to insecticide. The resultant metabolite profiles were compared with the control. In response to temperature and insecticide exposure, several metabolites and altered pathways were identified. Citrate, maltose, lipids, Nicotinate, Choline, Pyruvate and β-hydroxybutyrate were found as important components of major biological pathways such as tri-carboxylic acid cycle, branched amino acid degradation, glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, amino acid metabolism, lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, nucleotide PRPP pathway, and phospholipid metabolism. Furthermore, the results also suggest that the changes imposed by exposure to temperature and insecticides individually, are reversed with combined exposure, thus negating the impact of each other and posing a threat to the control of Aedes-borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, Zika and yellow fever.
Malaria has inflicted serious morbidity and mortality across the globe. The major brunt of the disease has been on African, South-East Asian and South American countries. Proportionally, malaria has ...attracted global research priorities and this is evident from the number of publications related to malaria from across the globe, irrespective of its endemicity. However, formal and exhaustive analyses of these 'malaria publications' are rarely reported. The systematic review and secondary data analyses were done to retrieve information on what has been published on malaria, where is it published, and which countries are major contributors to malaria research.The study presents malaria publications from 1945 to 2020 retrieved using three databases: Web of Science
, Embase
and Scopus
. Exported data were examined to determine the number of publications over time, their subject areas, contributions from various countries/organizations, and top publishing journals.The total number of published records on malaria ranged from 90,282 to 112,698 (due to three different databases). Based on the number of publications, USA, UK, France, and India were identified as the top four countries. Malaria Journal, American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, and PLoS One were the most preferred journals, whereas the University of London (Institutions other than LSHTM), the National Institute of Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the University of Oxford appeared to be the top contributing organization.A disproportional contribution to malaria research was observed with non-malaria endemic countries making the largest contribution. Databases differed in their output format and needed standardization to make the outputs comparable across databases.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Despite clinical and pathological distinctions between malaria and hypertension, accumulated epidemiological and evolutionary evidence indicate the need of deeper understanding how severe malaria ...contributes to elevated hypertension risk. Malaria is said to exert strong selection pressure on the host genome, thus selecting certain genetic polymorphisms. Few candidate polymorphisms have also been reported in the RAS (ACE I/D and ACE2 rs2106809) that are shown to increase angiotensin II (ang II) levels in a combinatorial manner. The raised ang II has some antiplasmodial actions in addition to protecting against severe/cerebral malaria. It is hypothesized that RAS polymorphisms may have been naturally selected over time in the malaria-endemic areas in such a way that hypertension, or the risk thereof, is higher in such areas as compared to non-malaria endemic areas. The purpose of this review is to gain deeper insights into various sparse evidence linking malaria and hypertension and suggesting a way forward.
The COVID-19 is still pandemic due to emerging of various variant of concern of SARS-CoV2. Hence, it is devastating the world, causing significant economic as well as social chaos. This needs great ...effort to search and develop effective alternatives along with vaccination. Therefore, to continue drug discovery endeavors, we used chalcone derivatives to find an effective drug candidate against SARS-CoV2. Chalcone is a common simple scaffold that exists in many diets as well as in traditional medicine. Natural as well as synthetic chalcones have shown numerous interesting biological activities and are also effective in fighting various diseases. Hence, various computational methods were applied to find out potential inhibitors of 3CL
Pro
using a library of 3000 compounds of chalcones. Firstly, the screening by structure-based pharmacophore model yielded 84 hits that were subjected to molecular docking. The top 10 docked compounds were characterized for stability by using 100 ns molecular dynamic (MD) simulation approach. Further, the binding free energy calculation by MMPBSA showed that four compounds bind to 3CL
Pro
enzyme with high affinity, i.e., − 87.962 (kJ/mol), − 66.125 (kJ/mol), − 59.589 (kJ/mol), and − 66.728 (kJ/mol), respectively. Since chalcone is a common simple scaffold that is present in many diets as well as in traditional medicine, we suggest that screened compounds may emerge as promising drug candidates for SARS-CoV-2. These compounds may be investigated in vitro to evaluate the efficacy against SARS-CoV-2.
Nipah virus (NiV) is an emerging zoonotic virus that caused several serious outbreaks in the south asian region with high mortality rates ranging from 40 to 90% since 2001. NiV infection causes ...lethal encephalitis and respiratory disease with the symptom of endothelial cell-cell fusion. No specific and effective vaccine has yet been reported against NiV. To address the urgent need for a specific and effective vaccine against NiV infection, in the present study, we have designed two Multi-Epitope Vaccines (MEVs) composed of 33 Cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes and 38 Helper T lymphocyte (HTL) epitopes. Out of those CTL and HTL combined 71 epitopes, 61 novel epitopes targeting nine different NiV proteins were not used before for vaccine design. Codon optimization for the cDNA of both the designed MEVs might ensure high expression potential in the human cell line as stable proteins. Both MEVs carry potential B cell linear epitope overlapping regions, B cell discontinuous epitopes as well as IFN-γ inducing epitopes. Additional criteria such as sequence consensus amongst CTL, HTL and B Cell epitopes was implemented for the design of final constructs constituting MEVs. Hence, the designed MEVs carry the potential to elicit cell-mediated as well as humoral immune response. Selected overlapping CTL and HTL epitopes were validated for their stable molecular interactions with HLA class I and II alleles and in case of CTL epitopes with human Transporter Associated with antigen Processing (TAP) cavity. The structure based epitope cross validation for interaction with TAP cavity was used as another criteria choosing final epitopes for NiV MEVs. Finally, human Beta-defensin 2 and Beta-defensin 3 were used as adjuvants to enhance the immune response of both the MEVs. Molecular dynamics simulation studies of MEVs-TLR3 ectodomain (Human Toll-Like Receptor 3) complex indicated the stable molecular interaction. We conclude that the MEVs designed and in silico validated here could be highly potential vaccine candidates to combat NiV infections, with great effectiveness, high specificity and large human population coverage worldwide.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•Degradation of a very high concentration of fluoranthene (200ppm) by bacteria.•Enhanced degradation by consortium of two strains evidences synergistic action.•Biodegradation kinetics reflects a half ...life period of fluoranthene degradation.•Induction of SH, 2-CBD, C12O, C23O, 2,3-PCD, 3,4-PCD, 4,5-PCD and esterase.•A clear linkage of ST and EA with fluoranthene degradation.
Fluoranthene is highly toxic and ubiquitous in the environment. A study on degradation of 200ppm of fluoranthene in MSM by two bacterial strains Pseudomonas aeruginosa PSA5, Rhodococcus sp. NJ2 and their consortium revealed that fluoranthene was degraded 74% by Rhodococcus sp. NJ2, 61% by Pseudomonas sp. PSA5 and 97% by their consortium. Higher degradation in the consortium may be attributed to synergistic action between two bacteria. It was also observed that several degradative enzymes catechol 1,2 dioxygenase, catechol 2,3 dioxygenase, protocatechuate 2,3 dioxygenase, protocatechuate 3,4 dioxygenase, protocatechuate 4,5 dioxygenase, salicylate hydroxylase and 2-carboxybenzaldehyde dehydrogenase were differentially induced at different stages of fluoranthene degradation. Biodegradation kinetics indicated half life period of fluoranthene degradation. Besides, glycolipid, as a biosurfactant, was induced to facilitate the degradation process. Hence, both the bacteria may be used individually or in combination for effective decontamination of oil and sludge contaminated soil.
PDF
