Stress Induced Status Of Blood Ammonia And Blood Urea With Reference To Hepatic Glutamate Dehydrogenase In Freshwater Fish, Labeo rohita.

Ammonia, being highly toxic and readily soluble in water, is excreted by aquatic animals like fishes. However, scarcity of water in the surrounding medium, may force the fishes to convert ammonia into urea. In the present study, the possible role of ureogenesis to avoid accumulation of toxic ammonia under water-restricted condition was tested in Labeo rohita. Blood urea and ammonia were estimated in the blood of the fishes and glutamate dehydrogenase acitivity was measured in the hepatic tissue. From the present study, however, it is found that the relationship between blood ammonia and blood urea in Labeo rohita and the possible role of glutamate dehydrogenase is not so pronounced in the experimental fish species

An unsupervised meta-graph clustering based prototype-specific feature quantification for human re-identification in video surveillance

Human re-identification is an emerging research area in the field of visual surveillance. It refers to the task of associating the images of the persons captured by one camera (probe set) with the images captured by another camera (gallery set) at different locations in different time instances. The performance of these systems are often challenged by some factors—variation in articulated human pose and clothing, frequent occlusion with various objects, change in light illumination, and the cluttered background are to name a few. Besides, the ambiguity in recognition increases between individuals with similar appearance. In this paper, we present a novel framework for human re-identification that finds the correspondence image pair across non-overlapping camera views in the presence of the above challenging scenarios. The proposed framework handles the visual ambiguity having similar appearance by first segmenting the gallery instances into disjoint prototypes (groups), where each prototype represents the images with high commonality. Then, a weighing scheme is formulated that quantifies the selective and distinct information about the features concerning the level of contribution against each prototype. Finally, the prototype specific weights are utilized in the similarity measure and fused with the existing generic weighing to facilitates improvement in the re-identification. Exhaustive simulation on three benchmark datasets alongside the CMC (Cumulative Matching Characteristics) plot enumerate the efficacy of our proposed framework over the counterparts

Glutamate Dehydrogenase and the Changing Pattern of Excretory Ammonia and Urea in Heteropneustes fossilis

Fishes, in general, follow ammonotelic mode of excretion. However, certain stress factors may provoke them to excrete urea. In the present study, the possible role of ureogenesis to avoid accumulation of toxic ammonia under water-restricted condition was tested in Heteropneustes fossilis. A total of hundred fishes were collected and sacrificed. Excretory urea and ammonia were estimated in the water of the aquarium and glutamate dehydrogenase acitivity was measured in the hepatic tissue. During the experimental period, excretory ammonia in Heteropneustes fossilis was found between 931% to 16% above the baseline ammonia and excretory urea was found between 112% to 898% above the baseline urea. A high degree of correlation with r (coefficient of correlation) above 0.9 is observed between excretory ammonia and urea in Heteropneustes fossilis. However, only a moderate degree of correlation is observed between the activity of glutamate dehydrogenase and excretory ammonia and urea

Anticarcinogenic Activity of Nanoencapsulated Quercetin in Combating Diethylnitrosamine-induced Hepatocarcinoma in Rats

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common primary hepatic malignancy worldwide. N-Nitroso compounds act as strong carcinogens in various animals, including primates. Diethylnitrosamine (DEN) is a well known carcinogenic substance, which induces hepatic carcinoma. The theme of the study was to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of nanoencapsulated flavonoidal quercetin (3,5,7,30,40-pentahydroxy flavone, QC) in combating DEN-induced hepatocarcinogenesis in rats. DEN induced a substantial increase in relative liver weights with proliferation and development of hyperplastic nodules. A significant increase in hepatocellular and nephrotoxicity indicated by serum alkaline phosphatase, aspartate transaminase, alanine transaminase, urea, and creatinine was observed in DEN-treated animals. Maximum protection from such toxicity was provided by nanoparticulated QC. Elevated levels of conjugated diene in DEN-treated rats were lowered significantly by nanoparticulated QC. Antioxidant levels in hepatic cells were reduced significantly by the induction of DEN. Nanoparticulated QC was found most potent for complete prevention of DEN-induced reduction in antioxidant levels in the liver. Upregulation of glutathione-S-transferase activity by DEN induction was reduced maximally by nanoencapsulated QC. Nanoencapsulated QC completely protected the mitochondrial membrane of the liver from carcinoma mediated by DEN injection. A significant correlation could be drawn between DEN-induced tissue reactive oxygen species generation and cytochrome C expression in the liver. Nanoencapsulated QC completely prevented the DEN-induced cytochrome C expression in the liver significantly

Cigarette Smoke induces p-Benzoquinone–Albumin Adduct in Blood Serum:Implications on Structure and Ligand Binding Properties

Earlier we had reported that irrespective of the source cigarette smoke (CS) contains substantial amounts of p-benzosemiquinone, which is readily converted to p-benzoquinone (p-BQ) by disproportionation and oxidation by transition metal containing proteins. Here we show that after CS-exposure, p-BQ-protein adducts are formed in the lungs as well as serum albumin of guinea pigs. We also show that serum of human smokers contains p-BQ-albumin adduct. It is known that human serum albumin (HSA) plays a very important role in binding and transport of a variety of ligands, including fatty acids and drugs. We show in vitro that p-BQ forms covalent adducts with free amino groups of all twenty amino acids as well as �-amino groups of lysine residues of HSA in a concentration dependent manner. When HSA is incubated with p-BQ in the molar ratio of 1:1, the number of p-BQ incorporated is 1. At the molar ratio of 1:60, the number of p-BQ incorporated is 40. The formation of HSA–p-BQ adduct has been demonstrated by absorption spectroscopy, MALDI-MS and MALDI-TOF–TOF-MS analyses. Upon complexation with p-BQ, the secondary structure and conformation of HSA are altered, as evidenced by steady state and timeresolved fluorescence, circular dichroism, 8-anilino-1-napthalenesulfonic acid binding and differential scanning calorimetry. Alteration of the structure and conformation of HSA results in impairment of its ligand binding properties with respect to myristic acid, quercitin and paracetamol. This might be one of the reasons why transport and distribution of lipids and drugs are impaired in smoker