Extracellular matrix in plants and animals: hooks and locks for viruses

Open Access Journal; Published online: 12 Sept 2017The extracellular matrix (ECM) of animal and plants cells plays important roles in viral diseases. While in animal cells extracellular matrix components can be exploited by viruses for recognition, attachment and entry, the plant cell wall acts as a physical barrier to viral entry and adds a higher level of difficulty to intercellular movement of viruses. Interestingly, both in plant and animal systems, ECM can be strongly remodeled during virus infection, and the understanding of remodeling mechanisms and molecular players offers new perspectives for therapeutic intervention. This review focuses on the different roles played by the ECM in plant and animal hosts during virus infection with special emphasis on the similarities and differences. Possible biotechnological applications aimed at improving viral resistance are discussed

E-Health monitoring using camera: Measurement of vital parameters in a noisy environment

We investigated contact-less solution to study micro circulation and its spatial heterogeneity by means of RGB imaging and to estimate blood oxygenation and heart rate. Oxygen saturation SpO2 and heart rate HR are indicators directly related to the cardiovascular diseases. Detecting low level of oxygen and abnormal heart rate can be an indicator of fatal heart problem and require urgent medical attention. Traditionally, measurement of HR and SpO2 is made through the probes or pulse oximeter attached to the skin surface and hence could be a potential way of spreading contagious infections. For a non-contact assessment of pulse rate, imaging photoplethysmogram iPPG has been proposed, where data is acquired through the video frames and different image analysis-based methods are used to extract required information. We detects face from the sequence of images using Viola Jones algorithm, followed by the extraction of region of interest, filtering performed in spatial domain removed artifacts, and intensity signal gives iPPG estimation by using CHROM method. The estimation of HR and SpO2 from these signals are evaluated on publicly available data set containing facial videos and reference contact photoplethysmogram. Furthermore, we also investigate the performance of these methods on data acquired under diverse illumination conditions. Relative correlation and % error gives satisfactory results to extend the method for more diverse scenario