REVIEW ON PHORBOL ESTER DEGRADATION OF JATROPHA SEED CAKE FOR ITS USE AS ANIMAL FEED

Jatropha curcas is an oil-seed plant with good adaptability to grow in unfavourable conditions like infertile soil with scanty rainfall. It had been exploited for the extraction of oil for bio-diesel. The compressed seed cake, after the oil extraction, is a rich source of protein with certain toxic and anti-nutritional factors. The major toxins in the seed cake are phorbol esters and trypsin inhibitors that lead to various health problems if ingested. Even though the application of the various extracts carries a lot of beneficial advantages, yet the toxicity in oil and the compressed cake does not allow the by-products and the oil to be used elsewhere. Various physicochemical and biological methods have been described for the detoxification of Jatropha seed cake and oil of which the chemical extraction with methanol and ethanol have shown promising results in reducing the toxin contents by 97-100% while UV-irradiation reduced the phorbol esters completely. Submerged fermentation by Bacillus sp. achieved complete detoxification of phorbol esters within a week. A new strain was found to degrade the phorbol esters to phorbol, myristic acid and acetic acid within 12 h of incubation in submerged fermentation process. The detoxified products, in future, can be used as animal feed and food supplement to help utilize the by-products as a healthy diet

The Role of the University of Buckingham's Public Health Society in being Socially Accountable: Raising awareness on public health issues, supporting local authorities in addressing health inequalities and exploring COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy amongst vulnerable groups.

See Letter to the Editor attached above

The evolution of new enzyme function: lessons from xenobiotic metabolizing bacteria versus insecticide-resistant insects

Here, we compare the evolutionary routes by which bacteria and insects have evolved enzymatic processes for the degradation of four classes of synthetic chemical insecticide. For insects, the selective advantage of such degradative activities is survival on exposure to the insecticide, whereas for the bacteria the advantage is simply a matter of access to additional sources of nutrients. Nevertheless, bacteria have evolved highly efficient enzymes from a wide variety of enzyme families, whereas insects have relied upon generalist esterase-, cytochrome P450- and glutathione-S-transferase-dependent detoxification systems. Moreover, the mutant insect enzymes are less efficient kinetically and less diverged in sequence from their putative ancestors than their bacterial counterparts. This presumably reflects several advantages that bacteria have over insects in the acquisition of new enzymatic functions, such as a broad biochemical repertoire from which new functions can be evolved, large population sizes, high effective mutation rates, very short generation times and access to genetic diversity through horizontal gene transfer. Both the insect and bacterial systems support recent theory proposing that new biochemical functions often evolve from ‘promiscuous’ activities in existing enzymes, with subsequent mutations then enhancing those activities. Study of the insect enzymes will help in resistance management, while the bacterial enzymes are potential bioremediants of insecticide residues in a range of contaminated environments

Isolation, Enrichment and Metagenomic Characterization of Simultaneous DDT and Lindane Degrading Microbial Consortium

Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) such as Lindane and DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) have been extensively used for agricultural purposes primarily for pest management and DDT is still the “sought after” for public health care programs to control vector-borne diseases like malaria in developing nations. OCPs, due to recalcitrant nature slowly degrade and pose adverse health effects to the environment and community. Residues of OCPs were detected in soil, water and air leading to potential bioaccumulation in food chains and were considered persistent organic pollutants. Microorganisms were found to be potential bio-degraders of organochlorine pesticides. In this study, the microbial population from aquatic systems, rivers from Yamuna (North India) and Godavari (South India) was isolated and enriched until a Lindane and DDT tolerant population was established. Screening of the population for understanding bioremediation thresholds was done using 5ppm of DDT and Lindane. The populated microbial cells formed the consortium that was subjected to metagenomic analysis to identify the organisms till species level. The 16S amplicon sequencing identified 871 species in the consortium and established the biodiversity of the consortium. The defined consortium was able to degrade DDT and Lindane up to 30 ppm simultaneously in varying order of pesticide concentrations