•Cr(VI) causes behavioural, histological, immunological changes in fresh water fishes.•Cr(VI) induces formation of micronuclei, binucleated cell and DNA breakage in fish RBC.•It also induces ...endocrine disruption in fish altering action of T3, T4, TSH and cortisol etc.•Chronic exposure of Cr(VI) results in hyperglycemia and hyperlactamia in fishes.•Enzymological activity has been found to be altered due to chronic exposure of Cr(VI).
Chromium is considered as one of the most common ubiquitous pollutants in the aquatic environment, but the pure metallic form is absent naturally. There are three oxidation states in case of Chromium viz., Cr (II), Cr (III), Cr (VI). Among which Cr (II) is most unstable. Cr (III) and Cr (VI) are the stable oxidation state of Chromium in the environment. Being one of the commonly used metals Chromium and its particulates enter the aquatic medium through effluents discharged from different industries like textiles, tanneries, electroplating workshops, ore mining, dyeing, printing-photographic and medical industries. Among these, hexavalent chromium is considered as the most toxic form because it readily passes cellular membranes and then reduced to trivalent form. This trivalent chromium combines with several macromolecules including genetic material inside the cytosol, and is ultimately exposes the toxic and mutagenic alterations due of chromium toxicity. Chromium is taken up either through gastrointestinal tract or respiratory tract. The amount varies depending upon the medium and the form of chromium. In this review, an attempt has been made to accumulate the mammoth available data regarding impact of chromium on fresh water fishes into a systematic representation. The main objective of the review is to provide a future guideline for the scientific community and public officials involved in health risk assessment and management ensuring a better environmental condition for human health.
Accurate and reliable forecasts of malarial incidences are necessary for the health authorities to ensure the appropriate action for the control of the outbreak. In this study, a novel method based ...on coupling the Firefly Algorithm (FFA) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) has been proposed to forecast the malaria incidences. The performance of SVM models depends upon the appropriate choice of SVM parameters. In this study FFA has been employed for determining the parameters of SVM. The proposed SVM-FFA model has been adopted in predicting the malarial incidences in Jodhpur and Bikaner area where the malaria transmission is unstable. Monthly averages of rainfall, temperature, relative humidity and malarial incidences have been considered as input variables. Time series of monthly notifications of malaria cases has been obtained from primary health centers and from other local health facilities for a period of January 1998 to December 2002 in the region of Bikaner and from January 1998 to December 2000 in Jodhpur region. Further, the rainfall, relative humidity and temperature data have been obtained from meteorological records. The performance of the proposed SVM-FFA model has been compared with Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Auto-Regressive Moving Average method and also with Support Vector Machine. The results indicate that the proposed SVM-FFA model provides more accurate forecasts compared to the other traditional techniques. Further, it has been recommended to carry out additional strides to explore the utility and efficacy of SVM-FFA model. Thus SVM-FFA can be an alternate tool to facilitate the control of vector borne diseases like malaria.
The JK Paper industry located at Rayagada discharges biologically untreated effluent more than the permissible limit prescribed by Pollution Control Board, Odisha in to the environment. The industry ...is seriously polluting the surrounding aquatic and terrestrial environment. No detailed intensive study was carried out by previous workers on this industry earlier. The present study aims at finding out the impact of effluent on the flora at the contaminated site. The chemically treated effluent (TE) contained significant amount of mercury and cadmium. The TE has high BOD, COD, dissolved solids and suspended solids when compared to normal river water at the site of discharge. The TE deteriorated the natural water bodies changing the physico-chemical properties of natural river water. After meeting the river water the TE was diluted after 1 km distance from the meeting point of the river. Crop plants collected from the contaminated site showed higher level of residual Hg and Cd and significant depletion in pigment was observed. Plants collected from both the sides of the treated effluent canal showed significant amount residue mercury and cadmium in the plant leaves. The plants exposed to the TE, showed variation in chlorophyll and Phaeophytin pigment content when compared to their respective control values in all terrestrial plants collected from the contaminated site. In some plant leaves little increment in the pigment level was noted but the values were not significant. The changes observed in the plant pigment might be due to heavy metal accumulation. The presence of residual Hg and Cd in crop plants and plant leaves grazed by grazing animals after absorption, accumulation and enrichment may lead to a possible biological magnification, warrants attention. Proper biological treatment, treatment of effluent by modern methods and removal of heavy metals from the effluent before discharge by the industry is suggested.
•Biological treatment of the effluent was not carried out by the industry & chemicals present in the effluent were significantly high..•The water quality of the river water deteriorated due to the discharge of effluent of the paper mill.•Plants collected from the contaminated site showed significant accumulation of cadmium and mercury in leaf tissues•Significant depletion in pigment content of exposed plant leaves was noticed.•Depletion in plant pigment was due to accumulation of cadmium and mercury in plant tissues absorbed from the effluent.
Bismuth magnesium oxide (BMO) thin films were prepared by an unconventional sol-gel method and the films deposited on glass slides were annealed at 60 °C and 120 °C. XRD reveals the single-phase ...nature of the synthesized material. The morphological characterization of the samples was carried out with SEM and optical characterization was performed with UV-Vis spectroscopy in the wavelength range 300 to 850 nm. The fundamental optical parameters like refractive index, optical conductivity, and extinction coefficient were calculated from the UV-Vis absorption spectra. The Bandgap for both the BMO thin films annealed at 60 °C and 120 °C were obtained as 3.26 eV and 3.29 eV, respectively. Also, this study covered the measurements of the complex dielectric function and depending on this, the interband transition strength, the surface energy loss function (SELF) and the volume energy loss function (VELF) were also obtained. The results obtained in this study are compared with available literature and it was found that parameters like refractive index, extinction coefficient, band gap etc. in our study are better than that reported by other researchers.
Graphical abstract
Highlights
The material is synthesized by an unconventional sol gel technique which is cost effective and easy to fabricate.
Obtained optical parameters are better than that reported earlier.
Optical properties of the materials indicate suitable applications of the synthesized thin films.
Complex management: RNA editing in trypanosomes Stuart, Kenneth D.; Schnaufer, Achim; Ernst, Nancy Lewis ...
Trends in biochemical sciences (Amsterdam. Regular ed.),
02/2005, Letnik:
30, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Most mitochondrial mRNAs in kinetoplastids require editing, that is, the posttranscriptional insertion and deletion of uridine nucleotides that are specified by guide RNAs and catalyzed by ...multiprotein complexes. Recent studies have identified many of the proteins in these complexes, in addition to some of their functions and interactions. Although much remains unknown, a picture of highly organized complexes is emerging that shows that the complex that catalyzes the central steps of editing is partitioned into distinct insertion and deletion editing subcomplexes. These subcomplexes coordinate hundreds of ordered catalytic steps that function to produce a single mature mRNA. The dynamic processes, which might entail interactions among multiprotein complexes and changes in their composition and conformation, remain to be elucidated.
Rice is the foremost staple food in the world, safeguarding the global food and nutritional security. Rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and water deficits are threatening global rice ...productivity and sustainability. Under real field conditions these climatic factors often interact with each other resulting in impacts that are remarkably different compared to individual factor exposure. Rice soils exposed to drought and elevated CO2 (eCO2) alters the biomass, diversity and activity of soil microorganisms affecting greenhouse gas (GHG) emission dynamics. In this review we have discussed the impacts of eCO2 and water deficit on agronomic, biochemical and physiological responses of rice and GHGs emissions from rice soils. Drought usually results in oxidative stress due to stomatal closure, dry weight reduction, formation of reactive oxygen species, decrease in relative water content and increase in electrolyte leakage at almost all growth and developmental phases of rice. Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration reduces the negative effects of drought by improving plant water relations, reducing stomatal opening, decreasing transpiration, increasing canopy photosynthesis, shortening crop growth period and increasing the antioxidant metabolite activities in rice. Increased scientific understanding of the effects of drought and eCO2 on rice agronomy, physiology and GHG emission dynamics of rice soil is essential for devising adaptation options. Integration of novel agronomic practices viz., crop establishment methods and alternate cropping systems with improved water and nutrient management are important steps to help rice farmers cope with drought and eCO2. The review summarizes future research needs for ensuring sustained global food security under future warmer, drier and high CO2 conditions.
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•Agronomic management options are promising for mitigating water deficit stress.•Rice crop behavior under elevated CO2 condition was discussed.•Opportunities under elevated CO2 are reviewed to explore the future research needs.
Scarcity of water and nutrients in orchards are the major causes of low productivity and decline of citrus in tropics. With a hypothesis that the optimal amount of water and nutrients application ...through drip irrigation (DI) could save substantial irrigation and fertilizers comparative to that under traditional basin irrigation (BI) with band placement of fertilizer (BPF), this study was conducted in citrus in vertisol of central India. Three DI regimes: I1, I2 and I3 scheduled at 50% class-A pan evaporation rate (Ep), 75% Ep, and 100% Ep atong with three fertilizer doses: F1, F2 and F3 at 50% recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF, N:P2Os:K20=600 g:200 g:100 g), 75% of RDF and 100% of RDF were applied to mandai'in plants respectively. BI with band placement of fertilizer (BPF) at 100% RDF was taken for comparison. All the drip-fertigation treatments (except I1F1) produced higher plant growth and fruit yield, with better quality fruits compared with BI+BPF. The highest fruit yield (16.39t ha^-1), water use efficiency (3.9 kg m^-3) and fertilizer use efficiency (87.3 kg kg^-1) were observed in I2F2. The concentrations of N, K and Fe in leaves were significantly higher in I2F2 compared to other treatments. The leaf photosynthesis, stomatal conductance (G) and transpiration were the highest in I3F3. However, leaf water use efficiency (LWUE, photosynthesis/transpiration) was the highest in I2F2. The overall results of this study demonstrated that the application of optimum quantity of water and fertilizers (I2F2) through DI could be a productive and water efficient option in citrus production in vertisol.
Domestication and selection are the major driving forces responsible for the determinative genetic variability in livestock. These selection patterns create unique genetic signatures within the ...genome. BovineSNP50 chip data from 236 animals (seven indicine and five taurine cattle breeds) were analyzed in the present study. We implemented three complementary approaches viz. iHS (Integrated haplotype score), ROH (Runs of homozygosity), and FST, to detect selection signatures. A total of 179, 56, and 231 regions revealed 518, 277, and 267 candidate genes identified by iHS, ROH, and FST methods, respectively. We found several candidate genes (e.g., NCR3, ARID5A, HIST1H2BN, DEFB4, DEFB7, HSPA1L, HSPA1B, and DNAJB4) related to production traits and the adaptation of indigenous breeds to local environmental constraints such as heat stress and disease susceptibility. However, further studies are warranted to refine the findings using a larger sample size, whole-genome sequencing, and/or high density genotyping.
•The combination of various statistical approaches could facilitate the wider spectrum of detection of both recent and ancient selection signatures.•The identified candidate genes provide insights into the adaptation and production performance of various cattle breeds.•Our observations can provide valuable knowledge for GWAS, genomic selection, implementing breeding schemes and conservation programmes.
The existing endeavor investigates on machinability characteristics through performance measurement of flank wear, surface quality and chip morphology during finish turning of AISI 52100 bearing ...steel (55 ± 1 HRC) under dry environment employing carbide insert coated along with various layers (TiN/TiCN/AhO3). Secondly the influence of machining variables viz. cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut on responses are assessed by ANOVA and modeled through quadratic regression and artificial neural network. Multiparametric optimization of cutting conditions has been obtained through Taguchi based grey relational analysis. Finally, tool life at ideal conditions has been evaluated through experiment. Based on the study, it is disclosed that coated carbide with multilayer insert outperformed during hard machining as wear at the flank surface and surface quality are within the benchmark cap of 0.3 mm and 1.6 microns respectively. From the chip morphology analysis, multilayer coated carbide insert generates lower temperature and maintains cutting edge sharpness and delays the growth of tool wear. ANN model using multilayered feed forward network yields accurate prediction of responses with minimum error percentage compared to QR model. The optimal parametric combination through GRA approach is found to be d1 (0.1 mm)-f1 (0.04 mm/rev)-v2 (110 m/min) and is greatly improved. Feed is the compelling aspect for multi-responses pursued by cutting speed. The tool life at optimized cutting condition is found to be approximately 19 minutes.
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•The availability of genomic data enables a very rapid global follow-up of COVID-19 progression.•Genomic surveillance integrates epidemiological and genomic data to track SARS-CoV-2 ...variants and their spread.•Genomics plays a significant role in the development of molecular diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccine candidates.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) quickly swept over the world, becoming one of the most devastating outbreaks in human history. Being the first pandemic in the post-genomic era, advancements in genomics contributed significantly to scientific understanding and public health response to COVID-19. Genomic technologies have been employed by researchers all over the world to better understand the biology of SARS-CoV-2 and its origin, genomic diversity, and evolution. Worldwide genomic resources have greatly aided in the investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has ushered in a new era of genomic surveillance, wherein scientists are tracking the changes of the SARS-CoV-2 genome in real-time at the international and national levels. Availability of genomic and proteomic information enables the rapid development of molecular diagnostics and therapeutics. The advent of high-throughput sequencing and genome editing technologies led to the development of modern vaccines. We briefly discuss the impact of genomics in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in this review.