In vitro antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of carotenoid pigment extracted from Sporobolomyces sp. isolated from natural source

The aim of the present study was to isolate and study about the antioxidant and antibacterial activity of carotenoid pigment. Sporobolomyces sp. isolated from the phyllosphere surface of rice plant has found to produce carotenoid pigment. The present investigation was carried out for antioxidant assays viz., DPPH, iron reducing and metal chelating activity. A steady increase in the antioxidant activities was observed in the carotenoid pigment with raising the pigment concentration. In the present study, the maximum antioxidation characteristics of carotenoid by DPPH, iron reducing and metal chelating assays (75.04 %, 1.88 % and 59.32 %) were achieved by pigmentation of Sporobolomyces sp. at the concentration of 100 ?g ml-1. The antibacterial activity was studied on several organisms like Enterococcus sp., Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus faecalis, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Among the six pathogens, the pigment was found to be more effective against E. coli (2.9 cm) and S. aureus (2.6 cm). This study revealed that yeast carotenoid pigment was a potential source for its use in food and pharmaceutical applications

Chemoenzymatic Probes for Detecting and Imaging Fucose-α(1-2)-galactose Glycan Biomarkers

The disaccharide motif fucose-α(1-2)-galactose (Fucα(1-2)Gal) is involved in many important physiological processes, such as learning and memory, inflammation, asthma, and tumorigenesis. However, the size and structural complexity of Fucα(1-2)Gal-containing glycans have posed a significant challenge to their detection. We report a new chemoenzymatic strategy for the rapid, sensitive detection of Fucα(1-2)Gal glycans. We demonstrate that the approach is highly selective for the Fucα(1-2)Gal motif, detects a variety of complex glycans and glycoproteins, and can be used to profile the relative abundance of the motif on live cells, discriminating malignant from normal cells. This approach represents a new potential strategy for biomarker detection and expands the technologies available for understanding the roles of this important class of carbohydrates in physiology and disease

Spontaneous R-Parity Violation, A4A_4 Flavor Symmetry and Tribimaximal Mixing

We explore the possibility of spontaneous R parity violation in the context of $A_4$ flavor symmetry. Our model contains $SU(3)_c \times SU(2)_L \times U(1)_Y$ singlet matter chiral superfields which are arranged as triplet of $A_4$ and as well as few additional Higgs chiral superfields which are singlet under MSSM gauge group and belong to triplet and singlet representation under the $A_4$ flavor symmetry. R parity is broken spontaneously by the vacuum expectation values of the different sneutrino fields and hence we have neutrino-neutralino as well as neutrino-MSSM gauge singlet higgsino mixings in our model, in addition to the standard model neutrino- gauge singlet neutrino, gaugino-higgsino and higgsino-higgsino mixings. Because all of these mixings we have an extended neutral fermion mass matrix. We explore the low energy neutrino mass matrix for our model and point out that with some specific constraints between the sneutrino vacuum expectation values as well as the MSSM gauge singlet Higgs vacuum expectation values, the low energy neutrino mass matrix will lead to a tribimaximal mixing matrix. We also analyze the potential minimization for our model and show that one can realize a higher vacuum expectation value of the $SU(3)_c \times SU(2)_L \times U(1)_Y$ singlet sneutrino fields even when the other sneutrino vacuum expectation values are extremely small or even zero.Comment: 18 page

Amino[(1 H

The asymmetric unit of the title salt, C(8)H(10)N(5) (+)·C(7)H(7)O(3)S(−), consists of two amino­[(1H-benzimidazol-2-yl)amino]­meth­an­im­inium cations and two 4-methyl­benzene­sulfonate anions. The cations are each stabilized by intra­molecular N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds between the free amino groups and the imine N atoms of the benzimidazole units, forming S(6) ring motifs. In the crystal, cations and anions are linked by N—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming a three-dimensional supra­molecular framework. Two strong π–π stacking inter­actions [centroid–centroid distances = 3.4112 (14) and 3.4104 (14) Å] also occur between the centroids of the imidazole rings of like cations

Lepton Number and Lepton Flavor Violation through Color Octet States

We discuss neutrinoless double beta decay and lepton flavor violating decays such as $\mu-> e\gamma$ in the colored seesaw scenario. In this mechanism, neutrino masses are generated at one-loop via the exchange of TeV-scale fermionic and scalar color octets. The same particles mediate lepton number and flavor violating processes. We show that within this framework a dominant color octet contribution to neutrinoless double beta decay is possible without being in conflict with constraints from lepton flavor violating processes. We furthermore compare the "direct" color octet contribution to neutrinoless double beta decay with the "indirect" contribution, namely the usual standard light Majorana neutrino exchange. For degenerate color octet fermionic states both contributions are proportional to the usual effective mass, while for non-degenerate octet fermions this feature is not present. Depending on the model parameters, either of the contributions can be dominant.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figure

Texture classification of proteins using support vector machines and bio-inspired metaheuristics

6th International Joint Conference, BIOSTEC 2013, Barcelona, Spain, February 11-14, 2013[Abstract] In this paper, a novel classification method of two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis images is presented. Such a method uses textural features obtained by means of a feature selection process for whose implementation we compare Genetic Algorithms and Particle Swarm Optimization. Then, the selected features, among which the most decisive and representative ones appear to be those related to the second order co-occurrence matrix, are used as inputs for a Support Vector Machine. The accuracy of the proposed method is around 94 %, a statistically better performance than the classification based on the entire feature set. This classification step can be very useful for discarding over-segmented areas after a protein segmentation or identification process

The Marker State Space (MSS) Method for Classifying Clinical Samples

The development of accurate clinical biomarkers has been challenging in part due to the diversity between patients and diseases. One approach to account for the diversity is to use multiple markers to classify patients, based on the concept that each individual marker contributes information from its respective subclass of patients. Here we present a new strategy for developing biomarker panels that accounts for completely distinct patient subclasses. Marker State Space (MSS) defines "marker states" based on all possible patterns of high and low values among a panel of markers. Each marker state is defined as either a case state or a control state, and a sample is classified as case or control based on the state it occupies. MSS was used to define multi-marker panels that were robust in cross validation and training-set/test-set analyses and that yielded similar classification accuracy to several other classification algorithms. A three-marker panel for discriminating pancreatic cancer patients from control subjects revealed subclasses of patients based on distinct marker states. MSS provides a straightforward approach for modeling highly divergent subclasses of patients, which may be adaptable for diverse applications. © 2013 Fallon et al

UDP-glucose 4, 6-dehydratase Activity Plays an Important Role in Maintaining Cell Wall Integrity and Virulence of Candida albicans

Candida albicans, a human fungal pathogen, undergoes morphogenetic changes that are associated with virulence. We report here that GAL102 in C. albicans encodes a homolog of dTDP-glucose 4,6-dehydratase, an enzyme that affects cell wall properties as well as virulence of many pathogenic bacteria. We found that GAL102 deletion leads to greater sensitivity to antifungal drugs and cell wall destabilizing agents like Calcofluor white and Congo red. The mutant also formed biofilms consisting mainly of hyphal cells that show less turgor. The NMR analysis of cell wall mannans of gal102 deletion strain revealed that a major constituent of mannan is missing and the phosphomannan component known to affect virulence is greatly reduced. We also observed that there was a substantial reduction in the expression of genes involved in biofilm formation but increase in the expression of genes encoding glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins in the mutant. These, along with altered mannosylation of cell wall proteins together might be responsible for multiple phenotypes displayed by the mutant. Finally, the mutant was unable to grow in the presence of resident peritoneal macrophages and elicited a weak pro-inflammatory cytokine response in vitro. Similarly, this mutant elicited a poor serum pro-inflammatory cytokine response as judged by IFNγ and TNFα levels and showed reduced virulence in a mouse model of systemic candidiasis. Importantly, an Ala substitution for a conserved Lys residue in the active site motif YXXXK, that abrogates the enzyme activity also showed reduced virulence and increased filamentation similar to the gal102 deletion strain. Since inactivating the enzyme encoded by GAL102 makes the cells sensitive to antifungal drugs and reduces its virulence, it can serve as a potential drug target in combination therapies for C. albicans and related pathogens