Cytokinin and abiotic stress tolerance -What has been accomplished and the way forward?

More than a half-century has passed since it was discovered that phytohormone cytokinin (CK) is essential to drive cytokinesis and proliferation in plant tissue culture. Thereafter, cytokinin has emerged as the primary regulator of the plant cell cycle and numerous developmental processes. Lately, a growing body of evidence suggests that cytokinin has a role in mitigating both abiotic and biotic stress. Cytokinin is essential to defend plants against excessive light exposure and a unique kind of abiotic stress generated by an altered photoperiod. Secondly, cytokinin also exhibits multi-stress resilience under changing environments. Furthermore, cytokinin homeostasis is also affected by several forms of stress. Therefore, the diverse roles of cytokinin in reaction to stress, as well as its interactions with other hormones, are discussed in detail. When it comes to agriculture, understanding the functioning processes of cytokinins under changing environmental conditions can assist in utilizing the phytohormone, to increase productivity. Through this review, we briefly describe the biological role of cytokinin in enhancing the performance of plants growth under abiotic challenges as well as the probable mechanisms underpinning cytokinin-induced stress tolerance. In addition, the article lays forth a strategy for using biotechnological tools to modify genes in the cytokinin pathway to engineer abiotic stress tolerance in plants. The information presented here will assist in better understanding the function of cytokinin in plants and their effective investigation in the cropping system

Inhibition of <i>mecA</i> and <i>bla_CTX-M</i> from MRSA and ESBL strains of diabetic foot infection by screening antibiotics compound library: an <i>in silico</i> analysis

A computational approach was exploited towards new molecule designing to target the inhibition of resistant genes mecA and blaCTX-M in MRSA and ESBL strains cultured from diabetic foot infected patients. The bioinformatic analysis involves the prediction of protein structures for mecA and blaCTX-M employing the Prime module of Schrodinger. The interactions were examined with the control antibiotics using the modelled protein structures, which revealed that Cefixime and Amikacin showed the highest binding affinity with mecA and blaCTX-M, respectively. According to the predictions of pharmacophores, the ADHRN hypothesis for mecA protein and the ADHR hypothesis for blaCTX-M protein were obtained. Subsequently, the antibiotic compound library from Selleckchem was retrieved, and molecular interactions studies were carried out to explore the interaction profiling of mecA with Tobramycin and blaCTX-M with Acyclovir. Further, the stability of protein-ligand interactions was validated through molecular dynamics simulations. Overall, this study suggests that the predicted pharmacophore model provides in-depth knowledge for repurposing an antibiotic drug with effective inhibition to enhance its therapeutic activity in the currently used ones. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma</p