ACETYLCHOLINESTERASE INHIBITION AND ANTIOXIDANT EVALUATION OF POLYPHENOLIC FRACTIONS AND OIL FROM FOUR MELON SEEDS USED AS CONDIMENTS IN NIGERIA

Species of different melon seeds i.e. Citrullus lanatus (Thunb),Cucumeropsis mannii, Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl. and Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad. are used mostly for culinary and health purposes in Nigeria, West Africa. Their health promoting potential may be connected to the antioxidant properties of their chemical constituents i.e. polyphenolic. Antioxidant evaluation was carried out on polyphenolic fractions and oils from the melon seeds’ species using the 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free-radical scavenging and 2, 2′-azino-bis-(3-ethyl) benzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) radical cation scavenging activities under in vitro conditions. Acetylcholinesterase inhibition effect of the polyphenolic fractions and oils were also investigated. The result of the antioxidant activity of the polyphenolic extracts and oils obtained by different in vitro methods varied remarkably on the basis of method used. Nevertheless, the oil from Citrullus colocynthis gave the best IC50 value of 3.88 µg/mL and the polyphenolic fraction from Cucumeropsis mannii gave the best result with IC50 values of 1.89 µg/mL and 22.49 µg/mL against DPPH and ABTS respectively. Polyphenolic fraction from seeds of Lagenaria siceraria and oil from seeds of Citrullus lanatus gave the best acetylcholinesterase inhibition activity with IC50 value of 47.40 µg/mL and 19.50 µg/mL. This study’s results indicated that the different seeds of melon species are sources of natural antioxidants preventing oxidative damage and a good source of acetylcholinesterase inhibition preventing old-age related and neurodegenerative diseases i.e. Parkinson and Alzheimer’s diseases.

Accurate whole human genome sequencing using reversible terminator chemistry

DNA sequence information underpins genetic research, enabling discoveries of important biological or medical benefit. Sequencing projects have traditionally used long (400-800 base pair) reads, but the existence of reference sequences for the human and many other genomes makes it possible to develop new, fast approaches to re-sequencing, whereby shorter reads are compared to a reference to identify intraspecies genetic variation. Here we report an approach that generates several billion bases of accurate nucleotide sequence per experiment at low cost. Single molecules of DNA are attached to a flat surface, amplified in situ and used as templates for synthetic sequencing with fluorescent reversible terminator deoxyribonucleotides. Images of the surface are analysed to generate high-quality sequence. We demonstrate application of this approach to human genome sequencing on flow-sorted X chromosomes and then scale the approach to determine the genome sequence of a male Yoruba from Ibadan, Nigeria. We build an accurate consensus sequence from >30x average depth of paired 35-base reads. We characterize four million single-nucleotide polymorphisms and four hundred thousand structural variants, many of which were previously unknown. Our approach is effective for accurate, rapid and economical whole-genome re-sequencing and many other biomedical applications