Molecular characterization of the Indian Andigena potato core collection using microsatellite markers

Twenty-four (24) microsatellite (SSR) markers of a new PGI kit were used to validate the genetic diversity of the 77 Indian Andigena potato core collections. In SSR analysis, polymorphic information content (PIC), allelic richness per locus of microsatellite loci and cluster analysis showed the high diversity of core collection. In total, 214 SSR alleles were detected in the core collection, out of which 208 alleles were polymorphic with absolute frequencies between 2 to 58. The PIC values of SSR loci ranged from 0.61 to 0.90. SSR-based dendrogram revealed eight main groups (Clusters I to VIII) including 26 single accessions at Dice similarity coefficient value of 0.37. None of the accession showed full similarity with any other accession, except that the maximum similarity (0.83) was observed between the accessions JEX/A-316 and JEX/A-317. PCA revealed 47.31% variation in the first three components. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) analysis which resulted into maximum variation was due to within country origins and yield types. The genetic diversity of the core collection based on the microsatellite data appeared to have quite distinct genotypes that were formed by the morph-agronomic traits. These findings not only demonstrate the diverse core collection but are also useful for selecting genetically distinct potato materials to widen the genetic background of the potato gene pool.Keywords: Core collection, genetic diversity, potato, Solanum tuberosum subsp. andigena, SSRAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(10), pp. 1025-1033, 6 March, 201

Characterization And Optimization Of Recombinant Gm-Csf Protein: Expression And Functional Analysis

Background: Granulocyte Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF) emerges as a key influencer, wielding its impact over haematopoiesis and immune modulation. It can address an array of intricate physiological and pathological scenarios. Objective: The present study is aimed to characterize and optimize the recombinant GM-CSF protein and to carry out its expression and functional analysis. Methods: GS115 (Pichia pastoris) strain was double digested with restriction enzymes 5’AOX1 and 3’AOX1α and ligated to the pPICZα vector. The positive clones were screened using PCR, mobility shift, Kex2 signal cleavage and restriction digestion. Further, the Pichia strain with pPICZα A was transformed into yeast cells, and its expression was studied using Spectroscopy and SDS-PAGE. In addition, the resulting Protein was purified using reverse-phase column chromatography and functional characterization was performed using a Pichia pastoris HCP kit. Results: The GM-CSF protein was successfully transformed into yeast cells, andtheSDS-PAGE profile confirmed the presence of GM-CSF in the expression system. A purified form of recombinant GM-CSF protein was obtained using HPLC, and the obtained chromatograms of both reference and test samples were comparable. Further, from the functional analysis, about9.67 ppm of the functional hematopoietic cell phosphatase (HCP) was observed in the purified GM-CSF sample. Conclusion: The Recombinant GM-CSF has been successfully prepared and confirmed for their expression and functional characteristics. The developed Protein can regulate production, cell differentiation and granulocytic functions

Disaster Management

The study deals with semi automatic extraction of urban risk related base data and their different generic aspects. Emphasis is given to the building footprint map which is a major base data. The main objective of the study is to extract Building Footprints from High Resolution Imagery using a semi automated approach. In this context the research mainly focuses on developing an integrated extraction to generate the risk related base data in an urban area from high resolution remote sensing images. A multi scale object oriented fuzzy classification of various urban settings was carried out. The method was applied in Dehradun, Uttaranchal, India. The city lies in the high seismic risk zone, also experiencing rapid urbanization due to its newly attained status of a state capital. The extracted base data maps were empirically evaluated by comparing them with visually interpreted reference maps. The evaluation of the extracted base data was carried out by both the quantitative and quality assessment techniques. It was observed that the building footprints extracted from fused Ikonos (PAN+XS) image gave acceptable accuracy for providing better management and better preparedness for any future disasters. Though there are compound problems associated with extraction of information from high resolution images, it is demonstrated from the study that such extraction techniques can be used and improved upo

Transcatheter Therapies for Aortic Regurgitation: Where Are We in 2023?

Aortic regurgitation (AR) is retrograde flow across the aortic valve in diastole and is classified from stage A to D based on severity and symptoms. Severe symptomatic AR (stage D) is a class I indication for surgical aortic valve replacement per the 2020 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines. Though off-label, patients with prohibitive surgical risk may benefit from transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in appropriately selected patients. However, TAVR is challenging in AR due to a lack of leaflet and annular calcification and dilation of the perivalvular apparatus, compromising the optimal anchorage of the bioprosthesis with a risk of prosthetic valve leak and embolization. Valve oversizing by 10–15% is frequently required, with caution not to oversize beyond 20%. Multimodality imaging, including echocardiography, magnetic resonance imaging, and computerized tomography, is essential for procedural planning. Registry data shows acceptable results for off-label TAVR with newer generation valves such as Medtronic Evolut and Edwards Sapien 3 for native AR. The JenaValve designed especially for TAVR for native AR is currently undergoing clinical trial. Until the results of randomized clinical trials are available, careful selection of native AR patients for TAVR is paramount to procedural and clinical success

Two-layer approach for Unsupervised and Semi-Supervised Learning for Satellite Images

In our galaxy, there are many advanced satellite. Large distance image can be captured with very high quality. The image provides sufficient information at global level and regional level. The field of satellite imagery is evaluated so much that it has created questions to human and environmental sustainability. It is still a challenge to scale those techniques to very high spatial resolutions. Satellite images are of greater spatial, spectral and high resolution creating large set of information about the image which makes it difficult to identify the features of images. This is because the images are unlabeled. Unsupervised method allows us to organize images into clusters. However, unsupervised method like machine learning uses features for clustering. Those images which are close, are kept in same group. The system uses satellite images datasets which provide aerial shots of different location. Images are grouped into sets of 5 where each image in a set was taken on a different day at a specific location but not necessarily at the same time each day. The images for each set cover the same area but not perfectly align. This dataset is provided as input dataset to proposed system. Feature extraction is done by sending a set of images through a network and extracting features at a certain layer which results in a feature set for a certain network. The process of transfer learning involves sending our own images through the network and extracting features at a certain layer. The process followed in this system is different from fine-tuning because images are not trained and the number of classes is not changed in the SoftMax layer of the network. Rather parameters learned by a pre-trained model to see if it can be used for an unlabeled dataset where fine tuning would not be possible are used

Analysis of genetic and epigenetic variation in in vitro propagated potato somatic hybrid by AFLP and MSAP marker

Background: Genetic and epigenetic changes (DNA methylation) were examined in the tissue-culture propagated interspecific potato somatic hybrids between dihaploid Solanum tuberosum and S. pinnatisectum . Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism (MSAP) were applied to detect the genetic and epigenetic changes, respectively in the somatic hybrids mother plants (1st cycle) and their regenerants (30th cycles sub-cultured). Results: To detect genetic changes, eight AFLP primer combinations yielded a total of 329 scorable bands of which 49 bands were polymorphic in both mother plants and regenerants. None of the scorable bands were observed in term of loss of original band of mother plant or gain of novel band in their regenerants. AFLP profiles and their cluster analysis based on the Jaccard\u2019s similarity coefficient revealed 100% genetic similarity among the mother plant and their regenerants. On the other hand, to analyze epigenetic changes, eight MSAP primer pair combinations detected a few DNA methylation patterns in the mother plants (0 to 3.4%) and their regenerants (3.2 to 8.5%). Out of total 2320 MSAP sites in the mother plants, 2287 (98.6%) unmethylated, 21 (0.9%) fully methylated and 12 (0.5%) hemi-methylated, and out of total 2494 MSAP sites in their regenerants, 2357 (94.5%) unmethylated, 79 (3.1%) fully methylated and 58 (2.3%) hemi-methylated sites were amplified. Conclusion: The study concluded that no genetic variations were observed among the somatic hybrids mother plants and their regenerants by eight AFLP markers. However, minimum epigenetic variations among the samples were detected ranged from 0 to 3.4% (mother plants) and 3.2 to 8.5% (regenerants) during the tissue culture process

Synthesis and biological evaluation of thiazolidinedione derivatives of chalcones and flavones as antihyperglycemic and antidyslipidemic agents

A series of chalcone and flavone derivatives (6a-d, 9a-f) based on 2,4-thiazolidinedione have been synthesized and evaluated for in vivo antihyperglycemic activity in sucrose loaded (SLM) and streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic animal models and also for antidyslipidemic activity in the triton model. Compounds 9d, 9e, and 9f exhibited potent blood glucose-lowering activity in both SLM and STZ models. Compounds 6c, 6d, and 9c, 9e, and 9f showed moderate lipid-lowering activity. The selected most potent compounds 6d and 9e were also studied in db/db mice for both antihyperglycemic and antidyslipidemic activity