LEAF RUST RESPONSIVE EXPRESSION PROFILING OF GRAS TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR FAMILY IN WHEAT (TRITICUM AESTIVUM L)

Objective: Rusts are among the most important fungal diseases of wheat all over the world responsible for losses in yield ranging from 25% to 90%. Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the major staple food crops all over the world but is greatly affected by leaf rust. GRAS is a plant-specific stress responsive transcription factor gene family. The objective of the present study is to carry out expression profiling of GRAS TFs during leaf rust pathogenesis.Methods: SOLiD SAGE library preparation. GRAS TFs were mapped to the four libraries using the CLC genomics workbench to study their expression profiles. A Co-expression network of these TFs has been constructed using WGCNA (weighted gene co-expression network analysis).Results: The four libraries have been prepared: S-M, S-PI, R-M R-PI. GRAS TFs were mapped to these libraries, giving different expression profiles of the 63 GRAS TFs. Pearson correlation coefficients were 0.56, 0.34 and 0.24 for R-M vs. R-PI, S-M vs. S-PI and S-PI vs. R-PI respectively. Highest difference in expression of TaGRAS genes was between two libraries S-PI vs. R-PI. TaGRAS genes have been clustered into seven (blue, turquoise, red, green, black, maroon and yellow) different modules in signed correlation.Conclusion: TaGRAS genes which are upregulated during leaf rust might be plays important roles to provide resistance to the plants. The difference in Pearson correlation coefficient indicates that susceptible and resistant-NILs utilize a different set of TaGRAS genes to counter leaf rust pathogenesis. The genes which are clustered together in coexpression network might be expressed together during leaf rust pathogenesis to provide resistance to the plant.Keywords: Leaf rust, Wheat. GRAS, Transcription Factors, SAGE, WGCN

Lake Tagimaucia Montane Lake as a Potential Late Holocene Environmental Archive in Fiji\u27s Volcanic Highlands

Lake Tagimaucia, a montane volcanic lake on Taveuni Island, is Fiji\u27s only high-elevation lake. This study examined a lacustrine sediment core to explore the lake\u27s potential as a palaeoenvironmental archive through the Late Holocene. Dating reveals no simple age-depth relationship due to sediment age-reversals. However, phases of fire activity are evidenced by two distinct charcoal bands. Catchment burns were probably related to significant ENSO-driven drought, although fire ignition by volcanic eruptions on Taveuni cannot be ruled out. Above the dominant charcoal band, the sediment profile exhibits notable positive shifts in organic matter, bulk density, δ13C, and C:N ratio. These peaks suggest a phase of accelerated catchment erosion, possibly triggered by post-burn instability. We introduce a conceptual model to explain the influence of sedge peat swamps on lake sedimentation processes. Surrounding sedge-dominated peatlands have extensively encroached Lake Tagimaucia. Floating peat mats, gradually accumulating through time, act as a repository of organic material that is stored directly on the lake surface. Episodes of drought and fire release old organics directly into the lake itself, probably contributing to the complex chronological sequence in the Late Holocene stratigraphy

Historical College Scorecard Big Data Analysis using In-Memory Processing

Data set is collected for colleges of United States. We would like to analyze different dimensions like SAT scores, ear- ning after graduation, net price and grant financial aids which is a great analyzation for the students. Big Data platform and BI tool such as Spark and tableau are adopted for data analy- zation and visualization. It is found that the top colleges for mean earnings are from medical field, mean earnings with respect to states, detailed comparison of average net price of California and New York, SAT scores for different colleges and also average undergraduates receiving Pell Grant in each colle- ges which will help students to select a college which meets their requirement

Multi Drug Resistance on Cancer Cell Lines

This document can be treated as Final Thesis Report for the project titled "Multi-Drug Resistance on Cancer Cell Lines". Drug is said to be resistant on cancer site if it doesn't bind the specified cancer tumor target or site. Drug Resistant mutant is a major obstacle in cancer treatment and a lot of research have been done to overcome this phenomenon with the present technology and also with limited success. My interests lies in understanding drug resistance or more specifically multi-drug resistance with the help of mathematical modeling through the lens of system biology. The processes and underlying experimental research is much applied than the simple mathematics which explains it here. You may find some experimental quotations and results which I have to believe to be true in order to address the problem. The central theme of this project is two-fold. First, we look at a stochastic processes describing cancer growth, mutant formation and treatment success or failure based on whether resistant mutants are created prior-to/after treatment or based on the rate of growth of cancer cells under simultaneous treatment with single/multiple drugs. Further refinement in the existing model is necessary to include biological complexity and realism. So, we incorporate cross-resistance effects of drugs which happens when multiple drugs are used for treatment. Result shows that cross-resistant two drugs are superior than single drug in use as most of the mutation confers resistant to that single drug in first line therapy. Adding second drug in combination with the first drug, despite of cross-resistance effect, improves the treatment success. We will also look into the aspects of quiescence effects and its relation to drug resistance. Finally, at the end we will review an optimal drug dozing regimen based on continuous and pulsed dosing scheme to delay the resistance formation to a maximum extent that arises due to single (epi) genetic alteration only. The stochastic process described here is multi-type branching process. We will calculate the resistance generation probability based on initial cancer tumor load and growth or death rate of cell colony. We will also find an average population size of resistant cells over time scale and other useful parameters defining the multi-type branching process

Calcineurin and actin dynamics in calcium-mediated microneme exocytosis

Plasmodium falciparum invades host erythrocytes by multiple invasion pathways. The invasion of erythrocytes by P. falciparum merozoites is a complex process that requires multiple interactions between host receptors and parasite ligands. A number of parasite proteins that mediate interaction with host receptors during invasion are localized to membrane-bound apical organelles referred to as micronemes and rhoptries. The timely release of these proteins to the merozoite surface is crucial for receptor engagement and invasion. It has been demonstrated previously that exposure of merozoites to a low potassium (K(+)) ionic environment as found in blood plasma leads to a rise in cytosolic calcium (Ca(2+)), which triggers microneme secretion. The signalling pathways that regulate microneme discharge in response to rise in cytosolic Ca(2+) are not completely understood. Here, we show that a P. falciparum Ca(2+)-dependent protein phosphatase, calcineurin (PfCN), is an essential regulator of Ca(2+)-dependent microneme exocytosis. An increase in PfCN activity was observed in merozoites following exposure to a low K(+) environment. Treatment of merozoites with calcineurin inhibitors such as FK506 and cyclosporin A prior to transfer to a low K(+) environment resulted in inhibition of secretion of microneme protein apical merozoite antigen-1 (PfAMA-1). Inhibition of PfCN was shown to result in reduced dephosphorylation and depolymerization of apical actin, which appears to be criticalfor microneme secretion. PfCN thus serves as an effector of Ca(2+)-dependent microneme exocytosis by regulating depolymerization of apical actin. Inhibitors that target PfCN block microneme exocytosis and limit growth of P. falciparum blood-stage parasites providing a novel approach towards development of new therapeutic strategies against malaria

SuryaKiran at MEDIQA-Sum 2023: Leveraging LoRA for Clinical Dialogue Summarization

Finetuning Large Language Models helps improve the results for domain-specific use cases. End-to-end finetuning of large language models is time and resource intensive and has high storage requirements to store the finetuned version of the large language model. Parameter Efficient Fine Tuning (PEFT) methods address the time and resource challenges by keeping the large language model as a fixed base and add additional layers, which the PEFT methods finetune. This paper demonstrates the evaluation results for one such PEFT method Low Rank Adaptation (LoRA), for Clinical Dialogue Summarization. The evaluation results show that LoRA works at par with end-to-end finetuning for a large language model. The paper presents the evaluations done for solving both the Subtask A and B from ImageCLEFmedical {https://www.imageclef.org/2023/medical