Micropropagation and conservation of selected endangered anticancer medicinal plants from the Western Ghats of India

Globally, cancer is a constant battle which severely affects the human population. The major limitations of the anticancer drugs are the deleterious side effects on the quality of life. Plants play a vital role in curing many diseases with minimal or no side effects. Phytocompounds derived from various medicinal plants serve as the best source of drugs to treat cancer. The global demand for phytomedicines is mostly reached by the medicinal herbs from the tropical nations of the world even though many plant species are threatened with extinction. India is one of the mega diverse countries of the world due to its ecological habitats, latitudinal variation, and diverse climatic range. Western Ghats of India is one of the most important depositories of endemic herbs. It is found along the stretch of south western part of India and constitutes rain forest with more than 4000 diverse medicinal plant species. In recent times, many of these therapeutically valued herbs have become endangered and are being included under the red-listed plant category in this region. Due to a sharp rise in the demand for plant-based products, this rich collection is diminishing at an alarming rate that eventually triggered dangerous to biodiversity. Thus, conservation of the endangered medicinal plants has become a matter of importance. The conservation by using only in situ approaches may not be sufficient enough to safeguard such a huge bio-resource of endangered medicinal plants. Hence, the use of biotechnological methods would be vital to complement the ex vitro protection programs and help to reestablish endangered plant species. In this backdrop, the key tools of biotechnology that could assist plant conservation were developed in terms of in vitro regeneration, seed banking, DNA storage, pollen storage, germplasm storage, gene bank (field gene banking), tissue bank, and cryopreservation. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to critically review major endangered medicinal plants that possess anticancer compounds and their conservation aspects by integrating various biotechnological tool

Cloth capture

We present a method for capturing the geometry and parameterization of fastmoving cloth using multiple video cameras, without requiring camera calibration. Our cloth is printed with a multiscale pattern that allows capture at both high speed and high spatial resolution even though self-occlusion might block any individual camera from seeing the majority of the cloth. We show how to incorporate knowledge of this pattern into conventional structure from motion approaches, and use a novel scheme for camera calibration using the pattern, derived from the shape from texture literature. By combining strain minimization with the point reconstruction we produce visually appealing cloth sequences. We demonstrate our algorithm by capturing, retexturing and displaying several sequences of fast moving cloth.

Invasive Group a Streptococcal Soft Tissue Infection and the Streptococcal Toxic Shock Like Syndrome

A recent increase in the number of patients with severe group a streptococcal soft tissue infections and the streptococcal toxic shock like syndrome (stsls) in Edmonton sparked the interest to review eight cases that occurred between March 1991 and December 1993, including two patients after cosmetic surgery. These cases were felt to be sporadic and not linked. Four of the eight patients (age range 25 to 64 years), including one patient following upper blepharoplasties, developed invasive infection without shock. These patients presented one to seven days after the initiating event with only mild fever, but severe pain and localized erythema and swelling in the affected area which progressed quickly with the formation of bullae. Two streptococcal specimens were serotyped as M1 and contained streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxins (spe) a and B. Management included surgical debridement, penicillin, and clindamycin (interferes with M-protein and toxin production). All four patients recovered. The other four patients, including one patient following rhytidectomy, (age range 45 to 83 years) were much more ill and developed stsls. They rapidly developed septic shock within 12 to 24 h and progressed to multiorgan involvement despite surgical debridement. One streptococcal specimen was serotyped as M1 and positive for spe a and B, another specimen as M12 and positive for spe B, and another specimen as M-nontypable and positive for spe B. Two patients died within five days of presentation. The other two patients recovered following lengthy hospitalization, reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation. </jats:p