Withania somnifera: Advances and Implementation of Molecular and Tissue Culture Techniques to Enhance Its Application

Withania somnifera, commonly known as Ashwagandha an important medicinal plant largely used in Ayurvedic and indigenous medicine for over 3,000 years. Being a medicinal plant, dried powder, crude extract as well as purified metabolies of the plant has shown promising therapeutic properties. Withanolides are the principal metabolites, responsible for the medicinal properties of the plant. Availability and amount of particular withanolides differ with tissue type and chemotype and its importance leads to identification characterization of several genes/ enzymes related to withanolide biosynthetic pathway. The modulation in withanolides can be achieved by controlling the environmental conditions like, different tissue culture techniques, altered media compositions, use of elicitors, etc. Among all the in vitro techniques, hairy root culture proved its importance at industrial scale, which also gets benefits due to more accumulation (amount and number) of withanolides in roots tissues of W. somnifera. Use of media compostion and elicitors further enhances the amount of withanolides in hairy roots. Another important modern day technique used for accumulation of desired secondary metabolites is modulating the gene expression by altering environmental conditions (use of different media composition, elicitors, etc.) or through genetic enginnering. Knowing the significance of the gene and the key enzymatic step of the pathway, modulation in withanolide contents can be achieved upto required amount in therapeutic industry. To accomplish maximum productivity through genetic enginnering different means of Withania transformation methods have been developed to obtain maximum transformation efficiency. These standardized transformation procedues have been used to overexpress/silence desired gene in W. somnifera to understand the outcome and succeed with enhanced metabolic production for the ultimate benefit of human race

CO2 from industrial off-gases for algae cultivation

In this work, technical solutions for capturing CO2 from CO2-containing off-gases from industry for feeding an algal cultivation were qualitatively evaluated. Also, cultivation of algae using both vent gases from a sour gas processing plant and flue gases from a coal-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant was studied. The most promising methods for CO2 capture seem to be those that absorb CO2 directly into the cultivation media by using separate bubbling carbonation columns, both for open ponds and closed photobioreactors. This lowers the energy requirements in comparison to flue gas injection and also enables the remainder of the flue gas to be led out through the existing flue gas stack. The low capacity of water to dissolve CO2 can be improved by addition of alkaline salts. The growth of two green algae, one diatom, and one cyanobacterium was examined in a laboratory-scale, batch-mode comparative cultivation experiment, using both pure CO2 and flue gas from a coal-fired CHP plant. No significant statistical differences in the growth were observed between the experiments except for the cyanobacterium, which had a decreased growth during flue gas cultivation. Microalgae suitable for cultivation using vent gases from a sour gas processing plant were screened by employing a 20 L photobioreactor. Based on these experiments, a certain mixture of microalgae exhibited rapid growth and better tolerance towards in terms of time taken to reach pH 7. A small-scale CO2 capture and cultivation pilot was set up using a 0.3 m3 CO2 absorption column for absorbing CO2 from vent gas in connection to a 0.2 m3 raceway pond. The produced algae was harvested and sent for anaerobic digestion studies. The experiments were successful, with a microalgae yield of 18 g/m2/day achieved, which on anaerobic digestion yielded about 0.4 m3 CH4/kg volatile solids fed

Drought mediated physiological and molecular changes in muskmelon (Cucumis melo L.).

Water deficiency up to a certain level and duration leads to a stress condition called drought. It is a multi-dimensional stress causing alteration in the physiological, morphological, biochemical, and molecular traits in plants resulting in improper plant growth and development. Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses responsible for loss of crops including muskmelon (Cucumis melo. L). Muskmelon genotype SC-15, which exhibits high drought resistance as reported in our earlier reports, was exposed to deficient water condition and studied for alteration in physiological, molecular and proteomic profile changes in the leaves. Drought stress results in reduced net photosynthetic rate (Pn), stomatal conductance (Gs) and transpiration (E) rate. With expanded severity of drought, declination recorded in content of total chlorophyll and carotenoid while enhancement observed in phenol content indicating generation of oxidative stress. In contrary, activities of catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and guaiacol (POD) were increased under drought stress. Peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) showed that drought increased the relative abundance of 38 spots while decreases10 spots of protein. The identified proteins belong to protein synthesis, photosynthesis, nucleotide biosynthesis, stress response, transcription regulation, metabolism, energy and DNA binding. A drought-induced MADS-box transcription factor was identified. The present findings indicate that under drought muskmelon elevates the abundance of defense proteins and suppresses catabolic proteins. The data obtained exhibits possible mechanisms adopted by muskmelon to counter the impacts of drought induced stress

Computational exploration of the dual role of the phytochemical fortunellin: antiviral activities against SARS-CoV-2 and immunomodulatory abilities against the host

SARS-CoV-2 infection generates approximately one million virions per day, and the majority of available antivirals are ineffective against it due to the virus\u27s inherent genetic mutability. This necessitates the investigation of concurrent inhibition of multiple SARS-CoV-2 targets. We show that fortunellin (acacetin 7-O-neohesperidoside), a phytochemical, is a promising candidate for preventing and treating COVID-19 and SARS by targeting multiple key viral target proteins, supporting protective immunity while inhibiting pro-inflammatory cytokines and apoptosis pathways, and protecting against tissue damage. Fortunellin is a phytochemical found in Gojihwadi Kwath, an Indian traditional Ayurvedic formulation with antiviral activity that has been shown to be effective in COVID-19 patients. The mechanistic action of its antiviral activity, however, is unknown. The current study comprehensively evaluates the potential therapeutic mechanisms of fortunellin in preventing and treating COVID-19 using molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulations, free-energy calculations, host target mining of fortunellin, gene ontology enrichment, pathway analyses, and protein-protein interaction analysis. Using computational approaches, we show that fortunellin reliably binds to key targets that are necessary for viral replication, growth, invasion, and infectivity, including Nucleocapsid (N-CTD) (-51.30 kcal/mol) and Replicase-dimer ( -45.91 kcal/mol), Replicase-monomer-NSP-8 binding site (-29.9 kcal/mol), Papain-like-protease (-29.60 kcal/mol), Nucleocapsid-NTD (28.46 kcal/mol), 2’-O-methyltransferase (-24.33 kcal/mol), Main-protease (-23.48 kcal/mol), Spike-RBD (-23.3 kcal/mol), Replicase-monomer at dimer interface (-23.27) kcal/mol, RNA-dependent-RNA-polymerase (-14.24 kcal/mol). Furthermore, we identify and evaluate the potential human targets of fortunellin and its effect on the SARS-CoV-2 infected tissues, including normal-human-bronchial-epithelium and lung cells, and organoids such as pancreatic, colon, liver, and cornea, using a computational network pharmacology approach. Thus, our findings indicate that fortunellin has a dual role: multi-target antiviral activities against SARS-CoV-2, as well as immunomodulatory capabilities against the host. In the future, lab-based and clinical studies will be required