In vitro regeneration through adventitious buds in Wattakaka volubilis, a rare medicinal plant

High frequency shoot regeneration from in vitro derived leaf explants of Wattakaka volubilis (L.f.) Stapf was achieved through callus mediated organogenesis. Organogenic calli were induced from 20 day old aseptic seedling explants on Murashige and Skoog medium fortified with various concentrations and combinations of plant growth regulators, benzylaminopurine (BAP), α-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), indole 3-butyric acid (IBA) and gibberellic acid (GA3). A mean of 8.6 shoots developed from organogenic callus induced from a 2 x 2 cm leaf explants on MS medium with 3% sucrose having 5.37μM NAA in combination with 2.22 μM BAP with 60% induction capacity. Further development of adventitious shoots could be achieved by sub culturing the callus to the same medium with 4.40 μM BAP and 0.288 μM GA3. Organogenesis could not be achieved from the calli of ex vitro derived leaf explants. The developed shoots were rooted on half-strength MS medium with 1% sucrose, 4.90 μM IBA and 0.93 μM kinetin at a frequency of 85%. Well rooted plantlets were then transplanted to vermiculite soil (3:1) mixture in polythene covered pots kept under culture room conditions. Approximately 60% plantlets survived and grew into whole plants.Keywords: Adventitious shoots, caulogenesis, organogenic callus-histologyAfrican Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 13(1), pp. 55-60, 1 January, 201

In vitro conservation of Ceropegia elegans, an endemic plant of South India

The purpose of this study was to develop in vitro techniques for conserving endemic species, Ceropegia elegans by axillary shoot multiplication. Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium with kinetin (Kn) 23.20 μM + indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) 5.71 μM was the best for axillary bud proliferation inducing a mean of 7.11 ± 0.07 shoots per node. Shoots developed were rooted best on half strength MS medium with 4.90 μM indole-3-butyric acid (IBA). Plantlets established in pots exhibited 72% survival rate.Keywords: Ceropegia elegans, endemic species, micropropagatio

Ethnobotanical Studies on Some Rare and Endemic Floristic Elements of Eastern Ghats-Hill Ranges of South East Asia, India

The Eastern Ghats, one of the nine Floristic Zones in India. Eastern Ghats are spread over three States of India, namely Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The hilly areas of Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh are mainly inhabited by 33 aboriginal/tribal communities, who still practice the age old traditional medicines and their application. There are 62 different tribes, inhabited in Orissa. The inhabitants of the aboriginal tribal communities, who still practice the age old traditional medicines and their applications. The author undertook ethno medicobotanical studies in Eastern Ghats along with systematic survey. Many tribal people depending on naturally growing or wild plants for their food and medicine in this region. The study during 1997-2005 brought to light, many unknown uses of plants which are interesting has been collected by the author. The present paper deals with some rare and endemic plant ethnobotanical uses of Eastern Ghats

VLSI Implementation of Encoder and Decoder for Advanced Communication Systems

Forward Error Correction (FEC) schemes are an essential component of wireless communication systems.Present wireless standards such as Third generation (3G) systems, GSM, 802.11A, 802.16 utilize some configuration of convolutional coding. Convolutional encoding with Viterbi decoding is a powerful method for forward error correction. The Viterbi algorithm is the most extensively employed decoding algorithm for convolutional codes which comprises of minimum path and value calculation and retracing the path. The efficiency of error detection and correction increases with constraint length. In this paper the convolutional encoder and viterbi decoder are implemented on FPGA for constraint length of 9 and bit rate ½

A SECURE DATA FORWARDING SCHEMA FOR CLOUD STORAGE SYSTEMS

Cloud Computing has been envisioned as the next-generation architecture of IT Enterprise. It moves the application software and databases to the centralized large data centers, where the management of the data and services may not be fully trustworthy. This unique paradigm brings about many new security challenges, which have not been well understood. This work studies the problem of ensuring the integrity of data storage in Cloud Computing. In particular, we consider the task of allowing a threshold proxy re-encryption, on behalf of the cloud client, to verify the integrity of the dynamic data stored in the cloud. The introduction of TPA eliminates the involvement of the client through the auditing of whether his data stored in the cloud are indeed intact, which can be important in achieving economies of scale for Cloud Computing. The distributed storage system not only supports secure and robust data storage and retrieval, but also lets a user forward his data in the storage servers to another user without retrieving the data back, since services in Cloud Computing are not limited to archive or backup data only. While prior works on ensuring remote data integrity often lacks the support of either public Audit ability or dynamic data operations, this paper achieves both. We first identify the difficulties and potential security problems of direct extensions with fully dynamic data updates from prior works and then show how to construct an elegant verification scheme for the seamless integration of these two salient features in our protocol design A decentralized erasure code is an erasure code that independently computes each codeword symbol for a message, where TPA can perform multiple auditing tasks simultaneously. Extensive security and performance analysis show that the proposed schemes are highly efficient and provably secure

Plant regeneration from leaf-derived callus in Plectranthus barbatus Andr. [Syn.: Coleus forskohlii (Wild.) Briq.]

A protocol was developed for Plectranthus barbatus for high frequency shoot organogenesis from leaf derived callus of aseptically grown plantlets derived from mature plant explants of high yielding clones (yield of forskolin 1.5 to 1.9%) on Gamborg medium (B5) medium supplemented with 2 mg/l 2,4- dichloro phenoxy acetic acid (2,4-D). Shoots were regenerated from the callus on MS medium supplemented with 6-benzyl amino purine (BAP) (2 mg/l) + naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) (1 mg/l). The highest rate of shoot multiplication was achieved at the 6th subculture and more than 2000 shoots were produced from callus clump. Roots were induced from shoots of in vitro grown plantlets on basal half strength MS medium and high rooting frequencies were obtained. Regenerated plants were easily acclimatized in greenhouse conditions and later transferred to soil with 100% survival. The procedure here allows the micropropagation of P. barbatus in five months of culture and proliferated cell masses which could be used for studies of organic compounds of pharmaceutical interest.Keywords: Callus culture, medicinal plant, root induction, shoot organogenesisAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(18), pp. 2441-244

Effect of medium, explants, cytokinins and node position on in vitro shoot multiplication of Caralluma lasiantha (Wight) N.E.Br., an endemic and medicinally important plant

An efficient shoot multiplication protocol was developed for Caralluma lasiantha, an endemic medicinal plant belonging to the family Asclepiadaceae. Mature explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS), (1962) medium, Gamborg's B5 (B5) and woody plant medium (WPM) supplemented with 6-benzyladenine (BA), 8.87 µM, for shoot induction. The nodal explants exhibited maximum shoot sprouting frequency when cultured on MS medium supplemented with BA (8.87 µM). Nodal explants cultured on MS medium supplemented with different concentrations of cytokinins with 3% sucrose exhibited 100% sprouting frequency. Maximum number of three to four shoots was induced from mature second nodal explants on MS medium containing BA (8.87 µM). The isolated microshoots were rooted on half strength MS medium supplemented with naphthalene acetic acid (NAA), 0.54 µM. The plantlets thus developed were hardened and successfully established in soil.Key words: 6-Benzyl adenine, nodal explant, naphthalene acetic acid, Caralluma lasiantha, micro  propagation

Protein carbonyls and protein thiols in rheumatoid arthritis

Background: Oxidative stress (OS) has an important role in the pathogenesis and progression of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). OS causes protein modification, thereby impairing the biological functions of the protein. This study was conducted to assess the oxidatively modified protein as protein carbonyl content and the antioxidant status as protein thiols, and to study the association between protein carbonyls and protein thiols in RA.Methods: Newly diagnosed RA patients who were not taking any disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs were included into the study group (n=45) along with age and sex matched healthy controls (n=45). Serum protein carbonyl content and protein thiols were estimated.Results: Elevated protein carbonyl content and decreased protein thiol levels (p<0.001) were observed in RA. A significant negative correlation was observed between protein carbonyl content and protein thiol levels (p<0.001).Conclusions: Oxidative stress in RA is evidenced by enhanced protein oxidation and decreased antioxidant protein thiol levels. Decreased protein thiols may also reflect protein modifications leading to compromise in the antioxidant properties. This oxidant and antioxidant imbalance needs to be addressed by therapeutic interventions to prevent disease progression

Synthetic seeds: A review in agriculture and forestry

Production of synthetic seeds has unraveled new vistas in in vitro plant propagation technology, because it offers many useful advantages on a commercial scale for the propagation of a variety of crop plants. These tools provide methods for production of synthetic seeds for conversion into plantlets under in vitro and in vivo conditions. This technology is useful for multiplying and conserving the elite agricultural and endangered medicinal plant species, which are difficult to regenerate through conventional methods and natural seeds. The synthetic seed technology was developed in different economically important plant species such as vegetable crops, forage legumes, industrially important crops, cereals, spices, plantation crops, fruit crops, ornamental plants, orchids, medicinal plants and wood yielding forest trees etc. All these aspects are presented in this review.Key words: Synthetic seeds, in vitro, in vivo plant propagation