Antimicrobial activity of Abhraka Bhasma prepared with Gomutra, for evaluation of its broad spectrum activity

The utility of Ayurvedic science is to maintain the health and cure the diseases of patient. Rasaushadis are unique formulations, which are easily administered, assimilated and absorbed in the body and quick in action. Harmful micro-organisms are the world’s major causes of morbidity and mortality. Thus, in such instance Abhraka Bhasma and Gomutra both explained as “Krimihara” in classical texts. To ensure their property present study has been conducted

REMOTE PAY

Disclosed herein is a method wherein a sender device initiates a transaction by requesting Virtual coins (Vcoins) in exchange for actual money through a remote pay application. A portion of this money is reserved for offline transactions. The sender device receives the Vcoins, which are essentially encrypted representations of the money, from a central server. These Vcoins are securely stored on the sender device before being transferred to the receiver device via locally established networks like NFC, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi, facilitated by the remote pay application. The receiver device receives and securely stores the Vcoins. Both the sender and receiver save each other\u27s device details for authentication purposes. The Vcoin records are updated, and when the sender device and the receiver device regain mobile network connectivity, the Vcoin transactions are synchronized with the central server. This method allows for secure and network-independent transactions using Vcoins

Review on Rasa Manjari - A Text of Indian Alchemy

Ayurveda is a multidimensional science using a set of complex pharmaceutical combinations in treatment. Rasashastra, pharmaceutical science mainly deals with the processing and therapeutic utilization of mercury, metals and minerals. Rasa Manjari is one of the important ancient texts on ancient Indian alchemy written by Shri Shalinatha in Approx. 15th century AD. Two commentaries are available on this text. Subject matter of the text contains total 862 verses which are divided into 10 chapters. There is description of Dhatuvada (conversion of lower metals into higher metals) and Dehavada (therapeutic usage of metals and minerals) of Mercury (Parada). The present paper will highlight the review of Rasa Manjari, providing information about the author, text and contributions

Doppler prediction of adverse perinatal outcome in intrauterine growth restriction

Background: Objective of current study was to determine and compare the diagnostic performance of Doppler ultrasonography of the fetal Middle Cerebral Artery (MCA) and Umbilical Artery (UA) for prediction of adverse perinatal outcome in suspected intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR).Methods: Fifty singleton pregnancies in third trimester of pregnancy with suspected intrauterine growth restriction were examined with Doppler ultrasonography of fetal MCA and UA.Results: Twenty patients of the fifty included patients had at least one major or minor adverse outcome. Major adverse outcome included perinatal deaths which included both intrauterine deaths and early neonatal deaths, hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, intraventricular hemorrhage, periventricular leukomalacia, pulmonary hemorrhage, necrotizing enterocolitis and septicemia. Minor outcomes included cesarean section for fetal distress, Apgar score below 7 at 5 minutes and admission to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for treatment. MCA PI is the most sensitive(90%) index in predicting any adverse perinatal outcome i.e. including both major and minor outcomes, Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and specificity being greatest for MCA/UA PI (96.6%, 93.7%). For the major adverse outcome most sensitive (86.6%) most specific (91.4%) and with highest PPV (81.2%) and NPV (94.1%), is MCA/UA PI. Ratio of MCA/UAPI is more sensitive (90%) than PI of both the arteries alone for overall prediction of adverse perinatal outcome.Conclusions: Thus we conclude that the Doppler studies of the multiple vessels in the fetoplacental unit can help in the monitoring of the compromised fetus and can help us predicting neonatal morbidity. This may be helpful in determining the optimal time of deliveries in pregnancies complicated by IUGR

A Critical Appraisal on Rasagrantha - Rasendrabhaskara

Rasashastra is the important and popular branch of Ayurveda which gained its existence from 7th century A.D. Plenty of the literature is available on Rasashastra till date but still the thirst of gaining the knowledge regarding the literature of Rasashastra remains unquenched. This may be due to lack of comparative knowledge of concepts from various texts. Rasendra Bhaskara is one of the rare text from the stream of Rasashastra which many of the readers may haven’t come across. This paper gives a framework regarding the author, period, chapters, contributions, salient features and pitfalls of the text Rasendrabhaskara which may help the reader to have a brief idea of text

Production of mycobacterial cell wall glycopeptidolipids requires a member of the MbtH-like protein family

Background Glycopeptidolipids (GPLs) are among the major free glycolipid components of the outer membrane of several saprophytic and clinically-relevant Mycobacterium species. The architecture of GPLs is based on a constant tripeptide-amino alcohol core of nonribosomal peptide synthetase origin that is N-acylated with a 3-hydroxy/methoxy acyl chain synthesized by a polyketide synthase and further decorated with variable glycosylation patterns built from methylated and acetylated sugars. GPLs have been implicated in many aspects of mycobacterial biology, thus highlighting the significance of gaining an understanding of their biosynthesis. Our bioinformatics analysis revealed that every GPL biosynthetic gene cluster known to date contains a gene (referred herein to as gplH) encoding a member of the MbtH-like protein family. Herein, we sought to conclusively establish whether gplH was required for GPL production. Results Deletion of gplH, a gene clustered with nonribosomal peptide synthetase-encoding genes in the GPL biosynthetic gene cluster of Mycobacterium smegmatis, produced a GPL deficient mutant. Transformation of this mutant with a plasmid expressing gplH restored GPL production. Complementation was also achieved by plasmid-based constitutive expression of mbtH, a paralog of gplH found in the biosynthetic gene cluster for production of the siderophore mycobactin of M. smegmatis. Further characterization of the gplH mutant indicated that it also displayed atypical colony morphology, lack of sliding motility, altered capacity for biofilm formation, and increased drug susceptibility. Conclusions Herein, we provide evidence formally establishing that gplH is essential for GPL production in M. smegmatis. Inactivation of gplH also leads to a pleiotropic phenotype likely to arise from alterations in the cell envelope due to the lack of GPLs. While genes encoding MbtH-like proteins have been shown to be needed for production of siderophores and antibiotics, our study presents the first case of one such gene proven to be required for production of a cell wall component. Furthermore, our results provide the first example of a mbtH-like gene with confirmed functional role in a member of the Mycobacterium genus. Altogether, our findings demonstrate a critical role of gplH in mycobacterial biology and advance our understanding of the genetic requirements for the biosynthesis of an important group of constituents of the mycobacterial outer membrane

Cooperation between a Coenzyme A-Independent Stand-Alone Initiation Module and an Iterative Type I Polyketide Synthase during Synthesis of Mycobacterial Phenolic Glycolipids

Several Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains, Mycobacterium leprae, and other mycobacterial pathogens produce a group of small-molecule virulence factors called phenolic glycolipids (PGLs). PGLs play key roles in pathogenicity and host−pathogen interaction. Thus, elucidation of the PGL biosynthetic pathway will not only expand our understanding of natural product biosynthesis, but may also illuminate routes to novel therapeutics to afford alternative lines of defense against mycobacterial infections. In this study, we report an investigation of the enzymatic requirements for the production of long-chain p-hydroxyphenylalkanoate intermediates of PGL biosynthesis. We demonstrate a functional cooperation between a coenzyme A-independent stand-alone didomain initiation module (FadD22) and a 6-domain reducing iterative type I polyketide synthase (Pks15/1) for production of p-hydroxyphenylalkanoate intermediates in in vitro and in vivo FadD22-Pks15/1 reconstituted systems. Our results suggest that Pks15/1 is an iterative type I polyketide synthase with a relaxed control of catalytic cycle iterations, a mechanistic property that explains the origin of a characteristic alkyl chain length variability seen in mycobacterial PGLs. The FadD22-Pks15/1 reconstituted systems lay an initial foundation for future efforts to unveil the mechanism of iterative catalysis control by which the structures of the final products of Pks15/1 are defined, and to scrutinize the functional partnerships of the FadD22-Pks15/1 system with downstream enzymes of the PGL biosynthetic pathway

Understanding the Role of PknJ in Mycobacterium tuberculosis: Biochemical Characterization and Identification of Novel Substrate Pyruvate Kinase A

Reversible protein phosphorylation is a prevalent signaling mechanism which modulates cellular metabolism in response to changing environmental conditions. In this study, we focus on previously uncharacterized Mycobacterium tuberculosis Ser/Thr protein kinase (STPK) PknJ, a putative transmembrane protein. PknJ is shown to possess autophosphorylation activity and is also found to be capable of carrying out phosphorylation on the artificial substrate myelin basic protein (MyBP). Previous studies have shown that the autophosphorylation activity of M. tuberculosis STPKs is dependent on the conserved residues in the activation loop. However, our results show that apart from the conventional conserved residues, additional residues in the activation loop may also play a crucial role in kinase activation. Further characterization of PknJ reveals that the kinase utilizes unusual ions (Ni2+, Co2+) as cofactors, thus hinting at a novel mechanism for PknJ activation. Additionally, as shown for other STPKs, we observe that PknJ possesses the capability to dimerize. In order to elucidate the signal transduction cascade emanating from PknJ, the M. tuberculosis membrane-associated protein fraction is treated with the active kinase and glycolytic enzyme Pyruvate kinase A (mtPykA) is identified as one of the potential substrates of PknJ. The phospholabel is found to be localized on serine and threonine residue(s), with Ser37 identified as one of the sites of phosphorylation. Since Pyk is known to catalyze the last step of glycolysis, our study shows that the fundamental pathways such as glycolysis can also be governed by STPK-mediated signaling

Genomic and functional analyses of mycobacterium tuberculosis strains implicate ald in D-cycloserine resistance.

CAPRISA, 2016.Abstract available in PDF file