In recent years, with climate change, drought stress has been witnessed in many parts of the world. In many irrigated regions also, shortage of water supply allows only limited irrigation. These ...conditions have an adverse effect on the productivity of many crops including cereals such as wheat. Therefore, genetics of drought/water stress tolerance in different crops has become a priority area of research. This research mainly involves use of quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis (involving both interval mapping and association mapping) for traits that are related to water-use efficiency. In this article, we briefly review the available literature on QTL analyses in wheat for traits, which respond to drought/water stress. The outlook for future research in this area and the possible approaches for utilizing the available information on genetics of drought tolerance for wheat breeding are also discussed.
The aim of the research was to examine the effect of Sleep Quality and Perceived Stress on Quality of Life in university students due to Covid-19 related restrictions and disruptions in education. ...The sample comprised of 130 university students. The data were collected using qualitative and quantitative methods. The results from content analysis highlighted three major themes - perceived stress, sleep quality and quality of life which were severely affected in students' life during pandemic. Based on the identified themes, data were further collected using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Perceived Stress Scale and WHO Quality of Life Scale-short version. Obtained data were treated with descriptive statistics, intercorrelations and regression analysis. The results of multiple regression indicated that both perceived stress and sleep quality significantly affected the quality of life of university students during Co vid-19 pandemic.
The extensive use of pesticides for enhancing crop productivity is posing a serious health concern to the living beings. No doubt, agricultural productivity has been increased to many folds using ...pesticides but due to the presence of toxic organophosphate (OP) compound in pesticides, they have become serious threat to the society. As these compounds inhibit activity of acetylcholinesterase enzyme involved in normal functioning of body, it leads to birth defect, immature delivery, infertility, irritability, fatigue, nervousness and depression. So, it is necessary to detect the presence of these acutely toxic compounds in the food and environment samples. There are several conventional methods available such as colorimetry, capillary electrophoresis, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), thin layer chromatography (TLC) etc., but they are not much accurate, sensitive, time-consuming and lack selectivity. All these drawbacks are eliminated by use of nanomaterial-based biosensors, which can successfully screen the various samples for the presence of OP compounds. The review focuses on different categories of nanomaterials used for the fabrication of present-day inhibition-based biosensors using acetyl cholinesterase. In this, various properties of biosensors such as electrode material, mode of detection, detection limit, linearity range, sensitivity and selectivity are reported in tabular form. The enzyme-free sensors such as aptasensors are also discussed in the review. With the help of this review, the researchers can understand the mechanism of detection of OP compound using nanomaterials, variety of nanomaterials to develop fast and efficient detection of OP compounds.
The emerging economies are moving toward electric vehicles (EVs), which are much sustainable means of transportation. However, many social, economic, and technological blockades of EV mobility remain ...to be addressed. The study investigates social, economic, and technological blockades for e‐mobility in an emerging economy and simultaneously concentrating on their existing and future business implications. Identification of e‐mobility blockades is obtained through literature review and consensus of the experts. Kappa analysis is used to strain the priority map of the mentioned blockades on the basis of developing consensus among experts. Thereafter, a multi criteria decision making approach that is, best‐worst method is adopted to rank the identified potential blockades. The study models the social, economic, and technological blockades of EV mobility in context of emerging economy. To cater blockades in a desired sequence, the study further suggests the ranking sequence of blockades to enhance e‐mobility toward sustainable development. The findings from the study reveals that “costs associated with EVs and “the lack of government policies, standards, and regulations” are the most important blockades to sustainable EV adoption. Thus, the organizations and the Government need to find ways to reduce the cost of EVs and simultaneously should plan and develop policies to enhance EV adoption and to reduce the usage of gasoline vehicles. The third most important blockade that is, “low demand due to undetermined sustainable benefits” indicates that there is an urgent need to spread awareness among the consumers about the sustainable benefits for the adoption of EVs. Further, the sensitivity analysis reveals that sensitivity range for weightage of the group of academicians lies between 0.3 and 0.7 on a scale of 1. If more weightage is provided to the practical scenario, it is discovered that “location of charging station (BEV4)” is more important than “lack of flexible distribution network (BEV2)” to enhance the amount of EV adoption in India. The study provides insights to practitioners dealing with e‐mobility in emerging economies, showing the appropriate sequence of the blockades to help them build up strategies to mitigate these blockades.
The in-situ and rapid detection of live and dead bacteria is essential for human and environmental care. It has become one of the biggest needs in the biological and medical sciences to prevent ...infectious diseases, which usually occur in hospitals and field clinics. In the current scenario, antibiotic resistance is one of the severe public health problems, which requires a quick and efficient solution. Here, we report a facile sensitive, portable, user-friendly, cost-effective and time saving approach for detection of live, dead and drug-resistant bacteria. The endogenous H2S evolution was targeted to differentiate between live and dead as well as antibiotic resistant bacteria. The silver nanorods (AgNRs) arrays sensors were fabricated by glancing angle deposition technique. The colorimetric and water wettability features of as-synthesized AgNRs are found to be highly sensitive and selective for H2S. E. coli. P. aeruginosa, B. subtilis and S. aureus were used as a model organism in this study. All the bacteria were found to produce H2S by their metabolism process. In order to detect the antibiotic resistant E. coli were grown in the presence of different concentration of ampicillin in Luria broth. A drastic visible change in color as well as wetting of AgNRs array was observed. To make the technique easy, a user-friendly and field deployable mobile app ‘Colorimetric Detector’ was developed. This technique takes only 4–6 h whereas the conventional methods need around 24 h for the same. This dual mode facile and, inexpensive method can be easily scaled up in the field of diagnostics.
•Fabricated silver nanorods array were found to be highly sensitive and selective towards H2S gas.•Colorimetric and wettability based detection of H2S gas evolved from the live bacteria.•Silver nanorods based sensor for detection of live, dead and antibiotic resistant bacteria.•A simple, cost effective, fast and user friendly mobile app-based detection is demonstrated.
CsPbBr
3
nanocrystals (NCs) due to their extraordinary photoluminescence quantum yield and photostability without any inorganic passivation (core–shell) are probable candidates for LED and LASER ...applications. Additionally, the polarized luminescence of these NCs in ensemble broadens the field of applications, especially in liquid crystal display. Here, we report structural distortions and polarized emission from CsPbBr
3
nanocubes with varying sizes of NCs. The change in Br–Pb and Br–Cs bond lengths with decreasing size of QDs reveals secrete of unprecedented increase in degree of emission polarization. The observed degree of polarization in this study is the highest reported value so far for lead halide perovskite structures in ensemble form without any additional alignment process. Different experimental configurations are used to study the transition dipole moments of CsPbBr
3
NCs, which suggests that the transition dipole moments of absorption and emission are non collinear.
RWP-RKs represent a small family of transcription factors (TFs) that are unique to plants and function particularly under conditions of nitrogen starvation. These RWP-RKs have been classified in two ...sub-families, NLPs (NIN-like proteins) and RKDs (RWP-RK domain proteins). NLPs regulate tissue-specific expression of genes involved in nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) and RKDs regulate expression of genes involved in gametogenesis/embryogenesis. During the present study, using in silico approach, 37 wheat RWP-RK genes were identified, which included 18 TaNLPs (2865 to 7340 bp with 4/5 exons), distributed on 15 chromosomes from 5 homoeologous groups (with two genes each on 4B,4D and 5A) and 19 TaRKDs (1064 to 5768 bp with 1 to 6 exons) distributed on 12 chromosomes from 4 homoeologous groups (except groups 1, 4 and 5); 2-3 splice variants were also available in 9 of the 37 genes. Sixteen (16) of these genes also carried 24 SSRs (simple sequence repeats), while 11 genes had targets for 13 different miRNAs. At the protein level, MD simulation analysis suggested their interaction with nitrate-ions. Significant differences were observed in the expression of only two (TaNLP1 and TaNLP2) of the nine representative genes that were used for in silico expression analysis under varying levels of N at post-anthesis stage (data for other genes was not available for in silico expression analysis). Differences in expression were also observed during qRT-PCR, when expression of four representative genes (TaNLP2, TaNLP7, TaRKD6 and TaRKD9) was examined in roots and shoots of seedlings (under different conditions of N supply) in two contrasting genotypes which differed in NUE (C306 with low NUE and HUW468 with high NUE). These four genes for qRT-PCR were selected on the basis of previous literature, level of homology and the level of expression (in silico study). In particular, the TaNLP7 gene showed significant up-regulation in the roots and shoots of HUW468 (with higher NUE) during N-starvation; this gene has already been characterized in Arabidopsis and tobacco, and is known to be involved in nitrate-signal transduction pathway.
This research was aimed at the fabrication of an improved enzyme-based amperometric biosensor for rapid quantification of ethanol. Alcohol oxidase (AOX) from Pichia pastoris was covalently ...immobilized on chemically treated polyvinylchloride (PVC) beaker and subsequently horseradish peroxidase (HRP), nafion (Nf), carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (c-MWCNTs), chitosan (CHIT) and gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were immobilized onto Au electrode to fabricate a working electrode. The enzyme-coated PVC surface was analysed morphologically via scanning electron microscopy (SEM). At different stages of construction, the electrochemical properties of working electrode were deciphered by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The biosensor displayed optimal response in a short time span of 12 s at pH 7.5 and 35°C temperature. The working range exhibited by the proposed biosensor was 0.01-42 mM with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.0001 µM and storage stability of 180 days at 4°C. When level of alcohol was evaluated in commercial samples via standard assay kit and existing biosensor, a good correlation (R
2
= 0.98) was observed which authenticates its reliability.
DNA demethylases (dMTases) are essential proteins in plants that regulate DNA methylation levels. The dMTase genes have been explored in a number of plant species, however, members of this family ...have not been reported in wheat. We identified 12 wheat dMTase genes divided into two subfamilies: repressor of silencing 1 (ROS1) and DEMETER-Like (DML). The TadMTases in the same subfamily or clade in the phylogenetic tree have similar gene structures, protein motifs, and domains. The promoter sequence contains multiple
cis
-regulatory elements (CREs) that respond to abiotic stress, hormones, and light, suggesting that the majority of
TadMTase
genes play a role in wheat growth, development, and stress response. The nuclear localization signals (NLSs), subcellular localization, and SRR motifs were also analyzed. The expression profile analyses revealed that
TadMTase
genes showed differential gene expression patterns in distinct developmental stages and tissues as well as under heat stress (HS). Furthermore, the qRT-PCR analysis revealed that
TadMTase
gene expression differed amongst wheat cultivars with varying degrees of HS tolerance. Overall, this work contributes to the understanding of the biological function of wheat dMTases and lays the foundation for future investigations.
The present review emphasizes on the quantification of biogenic amines (BAs) which are regarded as a quality indicator of food freshness or spoilage and for evaluating microbial action while food ...processing. BAs have various potential adverse effects on human health and they are widely found in varying concentrations in different food stuffs. In the quest for a reliable method for their precise detection, BA biosensors have emerged as an efficient tool which enables rapid and accurate assessment in miniature form. Various combinations of amine oxidase enzymes have been used for the fabrication of biosensors in order to enhance specific biorecognition and signal transduction. This article also summarizes the widely employed components used in the construction of a pertinent biosensor and the research results conducted previously. The meticulous description regarding the choice of transducers and the significant role of mediators in a high response biosensor has been reviewed. Moreover, it also encompasses the utilization of highly attractive electrolytic characteristics of nanoparticles to enhance the specificity and accuracy of BA biosensors.
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