SCREENING OF CELLULOLYTIC BACTERIA FOR PRODUCING CELLULASE UNDER SOLID STATE FERMENTATION USING WATER HYACINTH AS A SUBSTRATE

Objective: The infestation of water hyacinth in the aquatic system produces serious environmental problems. In our study, we have used the water hyacinth as a substrate for the production of cellulase enzyme from bacteria isolated from decayed water hyacinth.Methods: The bacterial isolates were morphologically and biochemically characterized and the bacterial cultures were identified as Proteus vulgaris and Serratia ficaria respectively. The effect of various process parameters such as pH, temperature, substrate concentration and fermentation time on cellulase production by Proteus vulgaris were optimized.Results: Out of twenty five isolates, two bacteria viz. AK1 and AK2 grew well on CMC agar media. Cellulase enzyme activity was found to be higher (4.07 U/ml) in case of Proteus vulgaris compared to Serratia ficaria. Cellulase production by Proteus vulgaris was optimized as pH 7, 35 °C temperature, 30% of water hyacinth and 24 h of incubation time. Cellulase produced under optimum condition was purified using dialysis and ion exchange chromatography. The molecular weight and specific activity of completely purified cellulase was found to be 33 KDa and 361.25 U/mg respectively.Conclusion: It can be concluded that the water hyacinth can be used as a potential substrate for production of cellulase by Proteus vulgaris which is isolated from decayed water hyacinth

Indian Sign Language Recognition Using Deep Learning Techniques

By automatically translating Indian sign language into English speech, a portable multimedia Indian sign language translation program can help the deaf and/or speaker connect with hearing people. It could act as a translator for those that do not understand sign language, eliminating the need for a mediator and allowing communication to take place in the speaker's native language. As a result, Deaf-Dumb people are denied regular educational opportunities. Uneducated Deaf-Dumb people have a difficult time communicating with members of their culture. We provide an incorporated Android application to help ignorant Deaf-Dumb people fit into society and connect with others. The newly launched program includes a straight forward keyboard translator that really can convert any term from Indian sign language to English. The proposed system is an interactive application program for mobile phones created with application software. The mobile phone is used to photograph Indian sign language gestures, while the operating system performs vision processing tasks and the constructed audio device output signals speech, limiting the need for extra devices and costs. The perceived latency between both the hand signals as well as the translation is reduced by parallel processing. This allows for a very quick translation of finger and hand motions. This is capable of recognizing one-handed sign representations of the numbers 0 through 9. The findings show that the results are highly reproducible, consistent, and accurate

2-D Attention Based Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network for Speech Emotion Recognition

Recognizing speech emotions  is a formidable challenge due to the complexity of emotions. The function of Speech Emotion Recognition(SER) is significantly impacted by the effects of emotional signals retrieved from speech. The majority of emotional traits, on the other hand, are sensitive to emotionally neutral elements like the speaker, speaking manner, and gender. In this work, we postulate that computing deltas  for individual features maintain useful information which is mainly relevant to emotional traits while it minimizes the loss of emotionally irrelevant components, thus leading to fewer misclassifications. Additionally, Speech Emotion Recognition(SER) commonly experiences silent and emotionally unrelated frames. The proposed technique is quite good at picking up important feature representations for emotion relevant features. So here is a two  dimensional convolutional recurrent neural network that is attention-based to learn distinguishing characteristics and predict the emotions. The Mel-spectrogram is used for feature extraction. The suggested technique is conducted on IEMOCAP dataset and it has better performance, with 68% accuracy value

Evaluation of the antibacterial activity of mango ginger rhizome extracts against bacterial wilt pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum

The Indian mango ginger (Curcuma amada Roxb.) is a perennial rhizomatous herb with a raw mango flavour. It is resistant to bacterial wilt disease. In order to understand the disease resistance mechanism of mango gingerthe hexane, chloroform and methanol extracts (5, 10, 25, 50 and 100mg/ml) and essential oils (1%, 5% and 10%) were tested against the bacterial wilt pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum by agar well diffusion method. The hexane, chloroform and methanol extracts showed more or less the same level of antimicrobial activity with a zone of inhibition ranging from 3-9 mm. The essential oils exhibited a zone of inhibition ranging from 3-7 mm.The major constituents of the essential oils were ?-myrcene and ?-pinene. The results indicated that the rhizome of mango ginger may contain compounds that are toxic to the pathogen. The extracts of mango ginger could be explored further for developing a natural bactericide against R. solanacearum

Analysis of Monosodium l-Glutamate in Food Products by High-Performance Thin Layer Chromatography

A simple, fast, specific, and precise high-performance thin layer chromatography method has been developed for the estimation of monosodium l-glutamate (MSG) in food products. Aluminum plates precoated with silica gel 60 GF254were used as stationary phase and a mixture of methanol–chloroform–formic acid in the ratio 5:5:1 (v/v) as mobile phase. Quantification was carried out by postchromatographic derivatization using 1% ninhydrin solution, and the developed spots were scanned by using a densitometer in absorbance mode at 485 nM. The Rfvalue of MSG was 0.64. The results of the analysis have been validated statistically and by the recovery studies. Linearity was observed in the concentration range of 400–1000 nG

Neratinib protects pancreatic beta cells in diabetes

The loss of functional insulin-producing β-cells is a hallmark of diabetes. Mammalian sterile 20-like kinase 1 (MST1) is a key regulator of pancreatic β-cell death and dysfunction; its deficiency restores functional β-cells and normoglycemia. The identification of MST1 inhibitors represents a promising approach for a β-cell-protective diabetes therapy. Here, we identify neratinib, an FDA-approved drug targeting HER2/EGFR dual kinases, as a potent MST1 inhibitor, which improves β-cell survival under multiple diabetogenic conditions in human islets and INS-1E cells. In a pre-clinical study, neratinib attenuates hyperglycemia and improves β-cell function, survival and β-cell mass in type 1 (streptozotocin) and type 2 (obese Leprdb/db) diabetic mouse models. In summary, neratinib is a previously unrecognized inhibitor of MST1 and represents a potential β-cell-protective drug with proof-of-concept in vitro in human islets and in vivo in rodent models of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes

Computational Micromodel for Epigenetic Mechanisms

Characterization of the epigenetic profile of humans since the initial breakthrough on the human genome project has strongly established the key role of histone modifications and DNA methylation. These dynamic elements interact to determine the normal level of expression or methylation status of the constituent genes in the genome. Recently, considerable evidence has been put forward to demonstrate that environmental stress implicitly alters epigenetic patterns causing imbalance that can lead to cancer initiation. This chain of consequences has motivated attempts to computationally model the influence of histone modification and DNA methylation in gene expression and investigate their intrinsic interdependency. In this paper, we explore the relation between DNA methylation and transcription and characterize in detail the histone modifications for specific DNA methylation levels using a stochastic approach

Evolutionary Conservation of Infection-Induced Cell Death Inhibition among Chlamydiales

Control of host cell death is of paramount importance for the survival and replication of obligate intracellular bacteria. Among these, human pathogenic Chlamydia induces the inhibition of apoptosis in a variety of different host cells by directly interfering with cell death signaling. However, the evolutionary conservation of cell death regulation has not been investigated in the order Chlamydiales, which also includes Chlamydia-like organisms with a broader host spectrum. Here, we investigated the apoptotic response of human cells infected with the Chlamydia-like organism Simkania negevensis (Sn). Simkania infected cells exhibited strong resistance to apoptosis induced by intrinsic stress or by the activation of cell death receptors. Apoptotic signaling was blocked upstream of mitochondria since Bax translocation, Bax and Bak oligomerisation and cytochrome c release were absent in these cells. Infected cells turned on pro-survival pathways like cellular Inhibitor of Apoptosis Protein 2 (cIAP-2) and the Akt/PI3K pathway. Blocking any of these inhibitory pathways sensitized infected host cell towards apoptosis induction, demonstrating their role in infection-induced apoptosis resistance. Our data support the hypothesis of evolutionary conserved signaling pathways to apoptosis resistance as common denominators in the order Chlamydiales

Effects of controlled diesel exhaust exposure on apoptosis and proliferation markers in bronchial epithelium – an in vivo bronchoscopy study on asthmatics, rhinitics and healthy subjects

BackgroundEpidemiological evidence demonstrates that exposure to traffic-derived pollution worsens respiratory symptoms in asthmatics, but controlled human exposure studies have failed to provide a mechanism for this effect. Here we investigated whether diesel exhaust (DE) would induce apoptosis or proliferation in the bronchial epithelium in vivo and thus contribute to respiratory symptoms.MethodsModerate (n?=?16) and mild (n?=?16) asthmatics, atopic non-asthmatic controls (rhinitics) (n?=?13) and healthy controls (n?=?21) were exposed to filtered air or DE (100 ?g/m 3 ) for 2 h, on two separate occasions. Bronchial biopsies were taken 18 h post-exposure and immunohistochemically analysed for pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic proteins (Bad, Bak, p85 PARP, Fas, Bcl-2) and a marker of proliferation (Ki67). Positive staining was assessed within the epithelium using computerized image analysis.ResultsNo evidence of epithelial apoptosis or proliferation was observed in healthy, allergic or asthmatic airways following DE challenge.ConclusionIn the present study, we investigated whether DE exposure would affect markers of proliferation and apoptosis in the bronchial epithelium of asthmatics, rhinitics and healthy controls, providing a mechanistic basis for the reported increased airway sensitivity in asthmatics to air pollutants. In this first in vivo exposure investigation, we found no evidence of diesel exhaust-induced effects on these processes in the subject groups investigated