Morbidity profile of 2 months-5years children according to IMNCI classification in paediatrics outpatient department of tertiary care hospital, Joka, Kolkata, India

Background: Every year, more than 10 million children die in developing countries before they reach their fifth birthday. Seven in 10 of these deaths are due to acute respiratory infections mostly pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, malnutrition & combination of these illnesses. The rationale of our study is to assess the profile of childhood illness in the paediatrics out- patient department at ESI-PGIMSR and MC, Joka, Kolkata, India so that the same burden can be minimised & to promote healthy upbringing of children below five years of age.Methods: This was an observational study of cross-sectional design conducted among the mother-child pair (child belonging to the age group of 2 months-5 years) visiting Pediatrics OPD during the study period i.e. 4 weeks. Convenience sampling method was used. The participants whose guardians did not give consent for the study & were seriously ill were excluded from this study.  A pre-designed and pre-tested interview schedule was used. After giving a brief introduction about the topic, verbal consent was taken & face to face interview was conducted in local language. Data was compiled & computed in SPSS software version 20.Results: According to the IMNCI classification, 15.9% of the study subjects had severe pneumonia, 17.8% had pneumonia. 1.9% of the study subjects had severe dehydration. None of the respondents presented with some dehydration. Only 1% of the respondents presented with anemia. 4.9% of the respondents presented with severe malnutrition, 13.8% of them had malnutrition according to IMNCI classification.31.7% of the respondents had primary immunisation.67.3% of them had been breastfed. Among them 41.2% of them were breastfed 8 times & more a day.92% of them had supplementary feeding as rice, 33.3% of them had supplementary feeding as baby food. 69.3% of them had complained of change in food habit during illness.Conclusions: Proper counselling to parents regarding prevention of common morbidities like pneumonia, diarrhoea, malnutrition etc. should be provided at each and every possible hospital contact. Awareness about danger signs & symptoms of urgent hospitalisation should be imparted using pamphlets or other health educational materials. Health workers also should undergo proper training so that proper classification of the conditions as well as efficient management could be provided

An insight into the molecular basis of salt tolerance of L-myo-inositol 1-P synthase (PcINO1) from porteresia coarctata (Roxb.) tateoka, a halophytic wild rice1

The molecular basis of salt tolerance of L-myo-inositol 1-P synthase (MIPS; EC 5.5.1.4) from Porteresia coarctata (Roxb.) Tateoka (PcINO1, AF412340) earlier reported from this laboratory, has been analyzed by in vitro mutant and hybrid generation and subsequent biochemical and biophysical studies of the recombinant proteins. A 37-amino acid stretch between Trp-174 and Ser-210 has been confirmed as the salt-tolerance determinant domain in PcINO1 both by loss or gain of salt tolerance by either deletion or by addition to salt-sensitive MIPS(s) of Oryza (OsINO1) and Brassica juncea (BjINO1). This was further verified by growth analysis under salt environment of Schizosaccharomyces pombe transformed with the various gene constructs and studies on the differential behavior of mutant and wild proteins by Trp fluorescence, aggregation, and circular dichroism spectra in the presence of salt. 4,4'-Dianilino-1,1'-binaphthyl-5,5-disulfonic acid binding experiments revealed a lower hydrophobic surface on PcINO1 than OsINO1, contributed by this 37-amino acid stretch explaining the differential behavior of OsINO1 and PcINO1 both with respect to their enzymatic functions and thermodynamic stability in high salt environment. Detailed amino acid sequence comparison and modeling studies revealed the interposition of polar and charged residues and a well-connected hydrogen-bonding network formed by Ser and Thr in this stretch of PcINO1. On the contrary, hydrophobic residues clustered in two continuous stretches in the corresponding region of OsINO1 form a strong hydrophobic patch on the surface. It is conceivable that salt-tolerant MIPS proteins may be designed out of the salt-sensitive plant MIPS proteins by replacement of the corresponding amino acid stretch by the designated 37-amino acid stretch of PcINO1

EVALUATING THE ECOLOGICAL RESILIENT DRIVEN PERFORMANCE OF A TROPICAL WASTE STABILIZATION POND SYSTEM USING ECOLOGICAL SIGNATURE OF BIOLOGICAL INTEGRITY

Using ecological signature of biological integrity as a measure of performance, the reclamation efficiency of waste stabilization ponds was evaluated over a period of four years in a tropical sewage treatment plant – cum fish culture consisting of two anaerobic, two facultative and four maturation ponds located serially across the sewage effluent gradient. The four maturation ponds were used for batch culture of fish. Samples of surface and bottom water as well as surface sediment were collected twice a month from different ponds of the system and examined for some nutrient cycling bacteria, primary production, chlorophyll content of micro-algae, phytoplankton, zooplankton abundance, fish growth and water quality parameters. Computation of ecological signature using aerobic mineralization index for heterotrophic and ammonifying bacteria revealed steady increase across the sewage effluent gradient. The heterotrophic and ammonifying bacterial populations appeared to have a direct function with the concentrations of chemical oxygen demand of water. The sum of total scores for different optimal conditions for fish growth increased as a function of the distance from the source of effluent implying that ecological resilience of the waste stabilization ponds has been accomplished by the sedimentation, chelation, and biological functional attributes mediated through redundancy of different subsystems, self- purification capacity of the system as a whole

EVALUATING THE ECOLOGICAL RESILIENT DRIVEN PERFORMANCE OF A TROPICAL WASTE STABILIZATION POND SYSTEM USING ECOLOGICAL SIGNATURE OF BIOLOGICAL INTEGRITY

Using ecological signature of biological integrity as a measure of performance, the reclamation efficiency of waste stabilization ponds was evaluated over a period of four years in a tropical sewage treatment plant – cum fish culture consisting of two anaerobic, two facultative and four maturation ponds located serially across the sewage effluent gradient. The four maturation ponds were used for batch culture of fish. Samples of surface and bottom water as well as surface sediment were collected twice a month from different ponds of the system and examined for some nutrient cycling bacteria, primary production, chlorophyll content of micro-algae, phytoplankton, zooplankton abundance, fish growth and water quality parameters. Computation of ecological signature using aerobic mineralization index for heterotrophic and ammonifying bacteria revealed steady increase across the sewage effluent gradient. The heterotrophic and ammonifying bacterial populations appeared to have a direct function with the concentrations of chemical oxygen demand of water. The sum of total scores for different optimal conditions for fish growth increased as a function of the distance from the source of effluent implying that ecological resilience of the waste stabilization ponds has been accomplished by the sedimentation, chelation, and biological functional attributes mediated through redundancy of different subsystems, self- purification capacity of the system as a whole

Storage induced changes in coliform, heterotrophic groups of bacteria and nutrient levels of human urine for its safe use in biological production

544-548Human urine is a potential source of various nutrients, minerals and trace elements. Its use as a fertilizer is growing popular among farmers. Here, we examined the pattern of changes in the counts of coliform, heterotrophic bacteria as well as physico-chemical characteristics of human urine during different days of storage under closed conditions at ambient temperature. We observed that after 253 days of storage under closed condition, the coliform counts were reduced significantly and remained within the safe limit to be used as fertilizer. With increase in storage period, the concentration of phosphate showed decline coupled with rise in pH, alkalinity and electrical conductance. Our study revealed that human urine can be used as safe fertilizer after 8 months of storage under closed conditions at ambient temperature ranging 25-35ºC

sll1981, an acetolactate synthase homologue of Synechocystis sp. PCC6803, functions as L-myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase

L-myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase (EC 5.5.1.4; MIPS) catalyzes the first rate limiting conversion of d-glucose 6-phosphate to l-myo-inositol 1-phosphate in the inositol biosynthetic pathway. In an earlier communication we have reported two forms of MIPS in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 (Chatterjee et al. in Planta 218:989-998, 2004). One of the forms with a ~50 kDa subunit has been found to be coded by an as yet unassigned ORF, sll1722. In the present study we have purified the second isoform of MIPS as a ~65 kDa protein from the crude extract of Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 to apparent homogeneity and biochemically characterized. MALDI-TOF analysis of the 65 kDa protein led to its identification as acetolactate synthase large subunit (EC 2.2.1.6; ALS), the putatively assigned ORF sll1981 of Synechocystis sp. PCC6803. The PCR amplified ~1.6 kb product of sll1981 was found to functionally complement the yeast inositol auxotroph, FY250 and could be expressed as an immunoreactive ~65 kDa MIPS protein in the natural inositol auxotroph, Schizosaccharomyces pombe. In vitro MIPS activity and cross reactivity against MIPS antibody of purified recombinant sll1981 further consolidated its identity as the second probable MIPS gene in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803. Sequence comparison along with available crystal structure analysis of the yeast MIPS reveals conservation of several amino acids in sll1981 essential for substrate and co-factor binding. Comparison with other prokaryotic and eukaryotic MIPS sequences and phylogenetic analysis, however, revealed that like sll1722, sll1981 is quite divergent from others. It is probable that sll1981 may code for a bifunctional enzyme protein having conserved domains for both MIPS and acetolactate synthase (ALS) activities

Cadmium tolerance and antibiotic resistance in <i>Escherichia coli</i> isolated from waste stabilization ponds

300-307The incidence pattern of cadmium tolerance and antibiotics resistance by Escherichia coli was examined periodically from the samples of water, sludge and intestine of fish raised in waste stabilization ponds in a sewage treatment plant. Samples of water and sludge were collected from all the selected ponds and were monitored for total counts of fecal coliform (FC), total coliform (TC) and the population of Escherichia coli, which was also obtained from the intestine of fishes. Total counts of both FC and TC as well as counts of E. coli were markedly reduced from the facultative pond to the last maturation pond. Tolerance limit to cadmium by E. coli tended to decline as the distance of the sewage effluent from the source increased; the effective lethal concentration of cadmium ranged from 0.1 mM in split chamber to 0.05 mM in first maturation pond. E. coli isolated from water, sludge and fish gut were sensitive to seven out of ten antibiotics tested. It appears that holistic functions mediated through the mutualistic growth of micro algae and heterotrophic bacteria in the waste stabilization ponds were responsible for the promotion of water quality and significant reduction of coliform along the sewage effluent gradient