A Study on Diet Consciousness of IT Employees

Diet denotes the aggregate of food consumed by a living organism for gaining energy needed for executing the routine activities of life. Diet involves the intake of adequate nutrition which may be oriented towards gaining good health or for managing weight. Human dieting is driven by taste preferences, health consciousness or ethical beliefs. Usually, human beings prefer to take balanced and healthy diet. People in developed nations enjoy the privilege of having adequate wealth to ensure that they get access to healthy diet without any constraint. Limited consumption of processed meat, hot and soft drinks and intake of food originating from plants is healthier. This descriptive study has endeavored to assess the diet consciousness of IT employees in Chennai & Puducherry and the association of such diet consciousness with their nature of weekend food, opinion about outside food, skipping the usual meal pattern and consuming nutritious food. Results reveal that quite a large number of IT employees skip breakfast and prefer home prepared food even during weekends. Green and vegetables are consumed to a better extent than dairy products, eggs, meat and fish by the respondents who enjoy only average level of family support on grounds of them complementing their healthy diet and making them feeling guilty for not consuming healthy diet. Finally, outside food has been rated average by the IT employees on grounds of price, hygiene and quality while they have appreciated its taste

Functional Genomic Screening of Nematocida parisii Host-exposed Proteins

Microsporidia are a divergent group of obligate, intracellular pathogens that are relatively poorly understood. The Caenorhabditis elegans intestinal infecting Nematocida parisii, has been shown to secrete a diverse arsenal of proteins to their cells upon infection, labelled “host-exposed” proteins. These secreted proteins may be serving roles as effector proteins, and the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae has proven to be a reliable system for the study of bacterial effectors. This uses yeast to study microsporidian host-exposed proteins. I have generated a pipeline to clone N. parisii genes into yeast expression vectors and demonstrated reliability by generating a gene set of 97 N. parisii host-exposed genes along with additional controls. Screening this gene collection identified 23 toxic genes, demonstrating that this strategy may help further understanding of microsporidian infection biology by identifying novel microsporidian effector proteins and learning more about the rules of these proteins and their expression in yeast.M.Sc

A Novel Method For Studying Cerebellar Responses to tDCS Using Mice: an in vitro Approach

Cerebellar ataxias are a group of neurodegenerative disorders associated with impaired cerebellar circuitry leading to loss of motor coordination and balance. Recent studies using animal models have shown that transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS) could be an effective therapy for the treatment of cerebellar ataxia. The sole output of the cerebellar cortex is from the axons of Purkinje cells, which allows the cerebellum to influence motor behavior via the cerebello-thalamo-cortical pathway. However, the influence of tDCS on Purkinje cells remains unknown. In this study, we used a customized whole-cell patch-clamp chamber, which allowed for patch-clamp recordings from Purkinje cells during tDCS. Using this chamber, we were able to record activity of a Purkinje cell prepared from a cerebellar slice of an adult mouse. In order to further investigate the effect of tDCS on cerebellar Purkinje cell activity future experiments will be performed where whole cell patch-clamp recordings are taken from cerebellar Purkinje cells with and without tDCS

Evaluating the effectiveness of ‘AETCOM Module’ on the medical interns posted in peripheral health centres of a tertiary care medical college in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu

Introduction: Effective communication skills between doctor and patient leads to enhanced patient satisfaction, better compliance to treatment and improved health outcomes. Aims and Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of Attitude, Ethics and Communication (AETCOM) module in improving the communication skills of the interns posted in peripheral health centres after methodical training and approach. Methods: A Module based interventional study was conducted among the medical interns posted in in the months of December 2019 and February 2020 at Rural Health Training Center (RHTC) and Urban Health Training Center (UHTC). The tool used to assess the interns was Kalamazoo Essential Element Communication checklist (KEEC) based on Kalamazoo Consensus Statement (KCS) comprising 7 components. Statistical Analysis: The difference in the means of pre test scores and post test scores were analyzed for statistical significance using Paired T test (p value < 0.05 considered significant). Results: The post-test scores were higher when compared to the pre-test scores with regard to batch, gender, mother tongue, center where the interns were posted and type of batch and these findings were statistically significant. Females had better competencies of opening discussion, understanding the patient's perspective, reaching agreement and providing appropriate enclosure to discussion than males and it was found to be statistically significant. Conclusion: AETCOM Module is effective in improving the communication skills of the medical students, which in turn will prevent malpractices and litigations against doctors in the near future

Persistence of Resident and Transplanted Genotypes of the Undomesticated Yeast Saccharomyces paradoxus in Forest Soil

Saccharomyces yeasts are intensively studied in biological research and in their domesticated roles in brewing and baking, and yet, remarkably little is known about their mode of life in forest soils. We report here that resident genotypes of the yeast S. paradoxus are persistent on a time scale of years in their microhabitats in forest soils. We also show that resident genotypes can be replaced by transplanted yeast genotypes. The high inoculum levels in experimental transplantations rapidly decreased over time, but the transplanted genotypes persisted at low abundance. We conclude that, in forest soils, Saccharomyces yeasts exist at very low abundance and that dispersal events are rare.One might expect yeasts in soil to be highly dispersed via water or insects, forming ephemeral, genetically heterogeneous populations subject to competition and environmental stochasticity. Here, we report persistence of genotypes of the yeast Saccharomyces paradoxus in space and time. Within 1 km2 in a mixed hardwood forest on scales from centimeters to tens of meters, we detected persistence over 3 years of native genotypes, identified by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) genome-wide, of the wild yeast Saccharomyces paradoxus growing around Quercus rubra and Quercus alba. Yeasts were recovered by enrichment in ethanol-containing medium, which measures only presence or absence, not abundance. Additional transplantation experiments employed strains marked with spontaneous defects in the URA3 gene, which also confer resistance to 5-fluoroorotic acid (5FOA). Plating soil suspensions from transplant sites on 5FOA-containing medium permitted one-step quantification of yeast CFU, with no interference from other unmarked yeasts or microorganisms. After an initial steep decrease in abundance, the yeast densities fluctuated over time, increasing in association with rainfall and decreasing in association with drought. After 18 months, the transplanted yeasts remained in place on the nine sites. In vitro transplantation experiments into nonsterile soil in petri dishes showed similar patterns of persistence and response to moisture and drought. To determine whether Saccharomyces cerevisiae, not previously recovered from soils regionally, can persist in our cold climate sites, we transplanted marked S. cerevisiae alone and in mixture with S. paradoxus in the fall of 2017. Five months later, S. cerevisiae persisted to the same extent as S. paradoxus

Data from: Persistence of resident and transplanted genotypes of the undomesticated yeast, Saccharomyces paradoxus in forest soil

One might expect yeasts in soil to be highly dispersed via water or insects, forming ephemeral, genetically heterogeneous populations subject to competition and environmental stochasticity. Here, we report persistence of genotypes of the yeast Saccharomyces paradoxus in space and time. Within 1 km2 in a mixed hardwood forest on scales from centimeters to tens of meters, we detect persistence over 3 years of native genotypes, identified by SNPs genome-wide, of the wild yeast, Saccharomyces paradoxus around Quercus rubra and Q. alba. Yeasts were recovered by enrichment in ethanol-containing medium, which measures only presence or absence, not abundance. Additional transplantation experiments employed strains marked with spontaneous defects in the URA3 gene, which also confer resistance to 5-Fluoroorotic acid (5FOA). Plating soil suspensions from transplant sites on 5FOA medium permitted one-step quantification of yeast colony-forming units, with no interference from other unmarked yeasts or microorganisms. After an initial steep decrease in abundance, the yeast densities fluctuated over time, increasing in association with rainfall and decreasing in association with drought. After 18 months, the transplanted yeasts remain in place on the nine sites. In vitro transplantation experiments into non-sterile soil in petri dishes showed similar patterns of persistence and response to moisture and drought. To determine whether S. cerevisiae, not previously recovered from soils regionally, can persist in our cold-climate sites, we transplanted marked S. cerevisiae alone and in mixture with S. paradoxus in fall, 2017. Five months on, S. cerevisiae persist to the same extent as S. paradoxus

Variants for all S. paradoxus strains listed in Table 1 of the publication

This .vcf file includes only biallelic loci, with no missing data, after filters were applied as described in the publication