IN VITRO ANTICANCER POTENTIAL OF STATIN FROM ASPERGILLUS TAMARII GRD119

Objectives: Fungi have been largely targeted for their biopotential mainly in pharmaceutical industry. Recently, there has been an increase in screening of biopharmaceuticals from microorganisms so as to eliminate side-effects and chemical damages from non-natural sources.Methods: In the present study, Aspergillus tamarii GRD119 (JX110981) was screened for the production of statin by conducting bioassays against Candida and filamentous fungi.Results: Based on the results obtained showing effective inhibition potential against Candida spp and A. fumigatus, further analysis of purification of statin by several chromatographic analyses such as column chromatography, TLC, HPTLC and HPLC was conducted. The extracted statin shows strong cytotoxic activity against HEP G2 cell line.Conclusions: These results designate the fungal strain and the statin produced can serve as candidates for potential genetic transformation and further structural analysis respectively.Keywords: Aspergillus tamarii, chromatography, purification, statin, cytotoxicity

Women’s Access to Land and Economic Empowerment in Selected Nigerian Communities

Despite various land policies that prescribe rights to land in many societies, women remain marginalized in access to and economic utilization of land. This is widespread in rural communities where informal institutions such as customs and traditions subsist. In most of these communities, the patriarchal structure of families is championed by the informal institutions that support male dominance. This study focuses on economic empowerment of women as it encapsulates sustainable wealth of women. It provides answers to two main research questions: a) what kind of relationship exists between land access and empowerment of women? And b) how important are individual and household attributes in informing women’s empowerment through land rights? The empirical results of this study provide some new insights as they demonstrate how land rights influence women’s economic empowerment. The study also finds that women’s earning capacity reduces when they take up the responsibility of becoming the heads of households and that their income increases as they become more educate

Estimating the Impact of the Recent Economic Crisis on Work Time in Turkey

This paper provides estimates of the impact of the recent economic crisis on paid and unpaid work time in Turkey. The data used in this study come from the first and only time-use survey available at the national level. Infrequency of collection of time-use data in Turkey does not allow us to make a direct comparison of pre-versus postcrisis time-use patterns. We introduce a tractable way for estimating these possible effects by measuring the impact of an increase in unemployment risk on time-use patterns of women and men living in couple households. The method developed here can be applied to other developing-country cases where there is a lack of longitudinal data availability. Our findings support the argument that economic crises reinforce the preexisting gender inequalities in work time