Native Plasmid-Encoded Mercury Resistance Genes Are Functional and Demonstrate Natural Transformation in Environmental Bacterial Isolates.

Plasmid-mediated horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a major driver of genetic diversity in bacteria. We experimentally validated the function of a putative mercury resistance operon present on an abundant 8-kbp native plasmid found in groundwater samples without detectable levels of mercury. Phylogenetic analyses of the plasmid-encoded mercury reductases from the studied groundwater site show them to be distinct from those reported in proximal metal-contaminated sites. We synthesized the entire native plasmid and demonstrated that the plasmid was sufficient to confer functional mercury resistance in Escherichia coli Given the possibility that natural transformation is a prevalent HGT mechanism in the low-cell-density environments of groundwaters, we also assayed bacterial strains from this environment for competence. We used the native plasmid-encoded metal resistance to design a screen and identified 17 strains positive for natural transformation. We selected 2 of the positive strains along with a model bacterium to fully confirm HGT via natural transformation. From an ecological perspective, the role of the native plasmid population in providing advantageous traits combined with the microbiome's capacity to take up environmental DNA enables rapid adaptation to environmental stresses.IMPORTANCE Horizontal transfer of mobile genetic elements via natural transformation has been poorly understood in environmental microbes. Here, we confirm the functionality of a native plasmid-encoded mercury resistance operon in a model microbe and then query for the dissemination of this resistance trait via natural transformation into environmental bacterial isolates. We identified 17 strains including Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria to be naturally competent. These strains were able to successfully take up the plasmid DNA and obtain a clear growth advantage in the presence of mercury. Our study provides important insights into gene dissemination via natural transformation enabling rapid adaptation to dynamic stresses in groundwater environments

Study of symptomatology and presentations of COVID-19 in pregnancy at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Objectives of this study were to study the incidence of SARS-CoV-19 positivity and the incidence of different signs and symptoms associated with COVID-19 in pregnancy and comparison of the same with studies done in different populations previously.Methods: In this retrospective study, antepartum and postpartum parameters were integrated into the clinical records and total 205 ANC and PNC SARS-CoV-19 positive patients were evaluated for the signs and symptoms of COVID -19 over 2 months.Results: In our study, of all patients tested SARS-CoV-19 positive only 14.65% were symptomatic and rest were incidentally tested positive on admission. Of the symptomatic patients 50% had breathlessness followed by fever (13.33%). 92% patients had mild disease; approximately 8% had moderate disease and 6 out of 205 patient needed ICU care.Conclusions: The present study shows that 85.35% SARS-CoV-19 positive ANC and PNC patients were asymptomatic while only 14.65% symptomatic with breathlessness being the most common symptom at our institute

Bessel-Maitland Function of Several Variables and its Properties Related to Integral Transforms and Fractional Calculus

In the recent years, various generalizations of Bessel function were introduced and its various properties were investigated by many authors. Bessel-Maitland function is one of the generalizations of Bessel function. The objective of this paper is to establish a new generalization of Bessel-Maitland function using the extension of beta function involving Appell series and Lauricella functions. Some of its properties including recurrence relation, integral representation and differentiation formula are investigated. Moreover, some properties of Riemann-Liouville fractional operator associated with the new generalization of Bessel-Maitland function are also discussed

Anatomical exploration of Sushrutokta sites of Siravyadha in Upper Extremities

Ayurveda is a holistic healthcare system of medicine which is more than 5000 year old. Sushruta known as Father of Surgery has described various surgical procedure along with some parasurgical measure. Raktamokshana is the one of the principal Shodhana therapy in Ayuveda. Acharya Sushruta advocate that if all the fivefold purificatory process cannot be performed due to lack of time then ever Raktamoskhana can serve the purpose. Acharya Sushruta has mentioned Siravyadhana most important method where Raktamoskhana is indicate and considered as Ardhachikitsa[1] Siravyadha is found very rarely used in Ayurvedic practise, may be because of lack of experience about the basic concept of Sharia  like Vedhya - Avedhya Sira, the exact sites where Shastra Patana can be done and also the other vital structures to be avoid from injury during the procedures. Siravyadha at a specific site according to different diseases is important part of this therapy. As Acharya Sushruta has mentioned specific sites of Siravyadha for various disease in Sharira Sthana,[2] it appear surprising why Sushruta has mentioned particular sites for Siravyadha in different diseases, why can't common sites is selected in all diseases. So, considering its importance a comprehensive study is done to identify and locate Sira of Vyadhana Sthana on basis of available literature. The study is limited to upper extremities

An Ontology based Enhanced Framework for Instant Messages Filtering for Detection of Cyber Crimes

Instant messaging is very appealing and relatively new class of social interaction. Instant Messengers (IMs) and Social Networking Sites (SNS) may contain messages which are capable of causing harm, which are untraced, leading to obstruction for network communication and cyber security. User ignorance towards the use of communication services like Instant Messengers, emails, websites, social networks etc, is creating favourable conditions for cyber threat activity. It is required to create technical awareness in users by educating them to create a suspicious detection application which would generate alerts for the user so that suspicious messages are not ignored. Very limited research contributions were available in for detection of suspicious cyber threat activity in IM. A context based, dynamic and intelligent suspicious detection methodology in IMs is proposed, to analyse and detect cyber threat activity in Instant Messages with relevance to domain ontology (OBIE) and utilizes the Association rule mining for generating rules and alerting the victims, also analyses results with high ratio of precision and recall. The results have proved improvisation over the existing methods by showing the increased percentage of precision and recall. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15056

Regional gene repression by DNA double-strand breaks in G1 phase cells

DNA damage responses (DDR) to double-strand breaks (DSBs) alter cellular transcription programs at the genome-wide level. Through processes that are less well understood, DSBs also alter transcriptional responses locally, which may be important for efficient DSB repair. Here, we developed an approach to elucidate th

Study of patterns of prescribing antibiotics in geriatric patients admitted to the medical wards in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Evidence indicates high prevalence of inappropriate prescribing of medicines especially in the elderly. This can cause increased incidence of adverse drug reactions, morbidity, mortality and cost of treatment. Also inappropriate use of antibiotics promotes emergence of antimicrobial resistance. This study aims to study the prescribing patterns of antibiotics administered in geriatric patients, disease conditions for which the antibiotics were prescribed and adherence of these antibiotic prescriptions to the 18th WHO essential medicine list.Methods: A prospective study was undertaken, over duration of 4 months at the government teaching hospital, Bidar Institute of Medical sciences, Bidar. Patients of either sex above 65 years of age admitted to medicine wards due to infections or those who acquired infection due to hospitalization and were on antibiotic treatment / prophylaxis were included. Data collection was done by scrutinizing the inpatient case sheets and investigation reports. Individual data was collected on preformed performa.Results: Out of the 140 patients 44.2% patients were admitted for treatment of respiratory tract infections. 17.1% of the patients received antibiotics prophylactically. Cefotaxime was observed to be the most commonly prescribed antimicrobial agent. It was included in 50% of antibiotic prescriptions. It was observed that 90% of antibiotics prescribed were in adherence to the WHO essential drug list.Conclusions: Polypharmacy is commonly observed practice in geriatric patients. Apart from increasing the cost of treatment it also promotes irrational prescription of drugs. Most of the prescriptions were in adherence with the WHO’s Essential Medicine List but antibiotics were mainly prescribed empirically

A Multi-Threading Algorithm for Constrained Path Optimization Problem on Road Networks

The constrained path optimization (CPO) problem takes the following input: (a) a road network represented as a directed graph, where each edge is associated with a "cost" and a "score" value; (b) a source-destination pair and; (c) a budget value, which denotes the maximum permissible cost of the solution. Given the input, the goal is to determine a path from source to destination, which maximizes the "score" while constraining the total "cost" of the path to be within the given budget value. CPO problem has applications in urban navigation. However, the CPO problem is computationally challenging as it can be reduced to an instance of the arc orienteering problem, which is known to be NP-hard. The current state-of-the-art algorithms for this problem are essentially serial in nature and cannot take full advantage (i.e., achieve good load balance) of the increasingly available multi-core systems to solve a CPO query. Our proposed parallel algorithm (with its intelligent task-assignment scheme) achieves both superior solution quality and very low execution times (via good load balancing). Moreover, our approach is also able to demonstrate an almost linear speed-up with an increase in the number of cores.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures, accepted as a short paper in the 23rd International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineerin

Pattern and pharmacotherapy of acute poisonings presenting to a tertiary care centre

Background: Acute poisoning, a therapeutic emergency and one of the common causes of morbidity and mortality globally. The rate of mortality in developed countries range from 1-2%, but in India it varies between 15-30%. According to World Health Organization (WHO), globally more than three million acute poisoning cases with 2,20,000 deaths occur annually. Most of the fatalities are due to the victim not reaching the hospital in time. This study aims to evaluate the pattern of acute cases of poisoning in tertiary care hospital attached to BMCRI.Methods: Prospective, observational study based on hospital records at tertiary care hospital (twelve months). Data regarding demographic profile and treatment was collected. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and SPSS-24.Results: Out of a total of 810 poisoning cases, 608 were included (381 poisoning, 138 drug overdose and 89 snake bite). Organophosphorus compounds (OPC) (131/608) and Aluminium phosphide (43/608) were the commonest poisons consumed in the age group 21-30 years. Sedative-hypnotics, non-benzodiazepine antiepileptics (non BZD AEDs) and paracetamol were common drug overdose cases. Snake bite accounted for 14.6%.Conclusions: OP compounds were the most common among poisons, while sedatives-hypnotics were frequently consumed drugs, followed by Snake bite. Young adults from urban areas were the common victims with suicidal intention. This reflects the need for stringent rules regarding the availability and sale of drugs and poisonous substances