Indian Herbs and Herbal Drugs Used for the Treatment of Diabetes

Traditional Medicines derived from medicinal plants are used by about 60% of the world’s population. This review focuses on Indian Herbal drugs and plants used in the treatment of diabetes, especially in India. Diabetes is an important human ailment afflicting many from various walks of life in different countries. In India it is proving to be a major health problem, especially in the urban areas. Though there are various approaches to reduce the ill effects of diabetes and its secondary complications, herbal formulations are preferred due to lesser side effects and low cost. A list of medicinal plants with proven antidiabetic and related beneficial effects and of herbal drugs used in treatment of diabetes is compiled. These include, Allium sativum, Eugenia jambolana, Momordica charantia Ocimum sanctum, Phyllanthus amarus, Pterocarpus marsupium, Tinospora cordifolia, Trigonella foenum graecum and Withania somnifera. One of the etiologic factors implicated in the development of diabetes and its complications is the damage induced by free radicals and hence an antidiabetic compound with antioxidant properties would be more beneficial. Therefore information on antioxidant effects of these medicinal plants is also included

Genetic evidence of differential dispersal pattern in the Asiatic wild dog: Comparing two populations with different pack sizes

IntroductionDispersal is a multi-causal, crucial life-history event in shaping the genetic and behavioral structure of mammals. We assessed the dispersal pattern of dholes aka Asiatic wild dog (Cuon alpinus), a social monogamous mammal at two tiger reserves of Maharashtra with different degrees of pack size and competition with tigers i.e. Tadoba-Andhari (TATR, smaller pack size, higher tiger density) and Nawegaon-Nagzira (NNTR, larger pack size, lower tiger density).MethodsWe used the microsatellite data of 174 individual genotypes (98 males and 67 females) to assess the dispersal pattern of dholes from two populations with varying pack size, tiger density, and landscape connectivity using gene flow as a proxy. We compared the population structure, pairwise F statistics, assignment index, and relatedness across a spatial scale.Results and discussionOverall, the results suggested a difference in sex-bias dispersal pattern for the two sub-populations, exhibiting significant results for female-biased dispersal in the TATR population with a smaller pack size and higher tiger density. Our study highlights the variability in sex-biased dispersal patterns in two different populations which could be the consequence of different variables such as pack size, tiger density, and geographical scale. The study warrants further quantitative investigation including several factors such as individual behavior, pack composition, pack size, tiger density, etc. In the present Anthropocene era, determining the sex bias in dispersal patterns for a short-range, pack-living carnivore will help in devising an effective conservation management plan for their long-term survival

Observaciones ecológicas, corológicas y taxonómicas de hídridos dulceacuícolas (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa: Hydridae) en la Cuenca del Duero

The presence of four taxa of freshwater hydras (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa: Hydridae) is recorded in shallow epicontinental waters of the Duero basin (NW Spain). In the Tera subbasin, individuals were found isolated on submerged macrophytes of three taxa: Hydra vulgaris Pallas, 1766, Hydra (Pelmatohydra) oligactis Pallas, 1766 and Hydra (Chlorohydra) viridissima Pallas, 1766, and also in the Carrión colonial groups on quartzite blocks of the taxon H. vulgaris var. aurantiaca Ehrenberg, 1838. In all cases they inhabit medium altitude mountain ecosystems with cold, transparent and oligotrophic waters, and slightly acidic pH with low mineralization. All the species were found in strict sympatry, although the first three species in different habitats could be found in Lake of Sanabria. Predation in captivity of H. oligactis on oligochaetes hookworms and periods of polyps incubation by budding are documented.Se describe la presencia de cuatro taxones de hidras de agua dulce (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa: Hydridae) en zonas someras epicontinentales de la cuenca del Duero (NO de España). En la subcuenca del Tera se encontraron individuos aislados sobre macrófitos sumergidos de tres taxones: Hydra vulgaris Pallas, 1766, Hydra (Pelmatohydra) oligactis Pallas, 1766 e Hydra (Chlorohydra) viridissima Pallas, 1766, y además en el Carrión grupos coloniales sobre bloques de cuarcita de la forma H. vulgaris var. aurantiaca Ehrenberg, 1838. En todos los casos se corresponde con ecosistemas de media montaña de aguas frías, transparentes y oligotróficas, de pH ligeramente ácido y con escasa mineralización. Todas las especies fueron localizadas en simpatría estricta, aunque en el lago de Sanabria se pudo citar tres taxones en diferentes hábitats. Se documenta la predación en cautividad de H. oligactis sobre gusanos oligoquetos y los periodos de formación de pólipos por gemación

Environmental sensing and response genes in cnidaria : the chemical defensome in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Cell Biology and Toxicology 24 (2008): 483-502, doi:10.1007/s10565-008-9107-5.The starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has been recently established as a new model system for the study of the evolution of developmental processes, as cnidaria occupy a key evolutionary position at the base of the bilateria. Cnidaria play important roles in estuarine and reef communities, but are exposed to many environmental stressors. Here I describe the genetic components of a ‘chemical defensome’ in the genome of N. vectensis, and review cnidarian molecular toxicology. Gene families that defend against chemical stressors and the transcription factors that regulate these genes have been termed a ‘chemical defensome,’ and include the cytochromes P450 and other oxidases, various conjugating enyzymes, the ATP-dependent efflux transporters, oxidative detoxification proteins, as well as various transcription factors. These genes account for about 1% (266/27200) of the predicted genes in the sea anemone genome, similar to the proportion observed in tunicates and humans, but lower than that observed in sea urchins. While there are comparable numbers of stress-response genes, the stress sensor genes appear to be reduced in N. vectensis relative to many model protostomes and deuterostomes. Cnidarian toxicology is understudied, especially given the important ecological roles of many cnidarian species. New genomic resources should stimulate the study of chemical stress sensing and response mechanisms in cnidaria, and allow us to further illuminate the evolution of chemical defense gene networks.WHOI Ocean Life Institute and NIH R01-ES01591

The role of ascorbate in antioxidant protection of biomembranes: Interaction with vitamin E and coenzyme Q

One of the vital roles of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is to act as an antioxidant to protect cellular components from free radical damage. Ascorbic acid has been shown to scavenge free radicals directly in the aqueous phases of cells and the circulatory system. Ascorbic acid has also been proven to protect membrane and other hydrophobic compartments from such damage by regenerating the antioxidant form of vitamin E. In addition, reduced coenzyme Q, also a resident of hydrophobic compartments, interacts with vitamin E to regenerate its antioxidant form. The mechanism of vitamin C antioxidant function, the myriad of pathologies resulting from its clinical deficiency, and the many health benefits it provides, are reviewed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44796/1/10863_2004_Article_BF00762775.pd

Structural and Sequence Similarities of Hydra Xeroderma Pigmentosum A Protein to Human Homolog Suggest Early Evolution and Conservation

Xeroderma pigmentosum group A (XPA) is a protein that binds to damaged DNA, verifies presence of a lesion, and recruits other proteins of the nucleotide excision repair (NER) pathway to the site. Though its homologs from yeast, Drosophila, humans, and so forth are well studied, XPA has not so far been reported from protozoa and lower animal phyla. Hydra is a fresh-water cnidarian with a remarkable capacity for regeneration and apparent lack of organismal ageing. Cnidarians are among the first metazoa with a defined body axis, tissue grade organisation, and nervous system. We report here for the first time presence of XPA gene in hydra. Putative protein sequence of hydra XPA contains nuclear localization signal and bears the zinc-finger motif. It contains two conserved Pfam domains and various characterized features of XPA proteins like regions for binding to excision repair cross-complementing protein-1 (ERCC1) and replication protein A 70 kDa subunit (RPA70) proteins. Hydra XPA shows a high degree of similarity with vertebrate homologs and clusters with deuterostomes in phylogenetic analysis. Homology modelling corroborates the very close similarity between hydra and human XPA. The protein thus most likely functions in hydra in the same manner as in other animals, indicating that it arose early in evolution and has been conserved across animal phyla

INTEREST-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM USING GMAIL TOPIC MODELLING

Emails are a fundamental part of modern communication. Much of communicative discourse in modern society occurs over email, resulting in personal collections for each mail user which are rich in latent user’s interests. Conventional recommendation systems require historical data of user activity and interactions to derive user interests. The absence of activity and interaction data poses an interesting challenge for generating relevant recommendations for users. We were motivated to investigate approaches to identify user interests in the absence of historical data to generate personalized content recommendations. There is opportunity to derive user interests from email data, which can be used by mail platforms with integrated content delivery services such as Gmail and Google News. These interests can compensate for the absence of historical data and can improve recommendation content relevance across integrated platforms and services. This research project explores the use of topic modeling techniques including different probabilistic generative models, transformers, and clustering to extract interests for users in an email dataset. After interest extraction, we generate ratings which are fed to a collaborative filtering recommendation system, to generate personalized news article recommendations for users based on their identified interests. The result of this research project demonstrates the effective use of topic modeling based recommendation using Hierarchical Dirichlet Process, Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis, Latent Dirichlet Allocation and BERT transformers, with Latent Dirichlet Allocation standing out with a topic coherence of 61% and demonstrating high scalability. Our experiments contribute to the development of more effective personalized content delivery systems that can better cater to users\u27 interests, even in the absence of explicit user interest historical data