COVID-19 Associated Mucormycosis::A Review of an Emergent Epidemic Fungal Infection in 3 Era of COVID-19 Pandemic

At a time when the COVID-19's second wave is still picking up in countries like India, a number of reports describe the potential association with a rise in the number of cases of mucormycosis, commonly known as the black fungus. This fungal infection has been around for centuries and affects those people whose immunity has been compromised due to severe health conditions. In this article, we provide a detailed overview of mucormycosis and discuss how COVID-19 could have caused a sudden spike in an otherwise rare disease in countries like India. The article discusses the various symptoms of the disease, class of people most vulnerable to this infection, preventive measures to avoid the disease, and various treatments that exist in clinical practice and research to manage the disease

Tetralocular mustard, Brassica juncea: new promising variability through interspecific hybridization

Lines of Brassica juncea with tetralocular (four-valved) pods were produced by interspecific hybridization between dilocular (two-valved) B. juncea var. Pusa Barani and tetralocular yellow-seeded turnip rape (Brassica rapa ssp. trilocularis) var. YID-1. Some selected lines were significantly superior to their parents for some agronomic traits, including seed yield and harvest index. Line 11 was the best among these and recorded 70% yield advantage in plot yield

Heterosis and combining ability in Indian mustard (Brassica juncea L. Czern. and Coss.)

Information on heterosis and combining ability is derived from data on seed yield and 3 yield components in 6 lines, 16 testers and their 96 F1 hybrids from a line × tester mating design. Of the hybrids, 64 and 38 showed heterosis for seed yield over the better parent and standard cv. Varuna, respectively

Not Available

Host and non host response of Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) against hemipteran insect-pest aphid.Productivity of Indian mustard (B. juncea), a major oil yielding crop in rapeseed-mustard group is heavily inficted by mustard aphid, L. erysimi. Mustard aphid, a specialist aphid species on rapeseed-mustard crops, rapidly multiplies and colonizes the plants leading to successful infestation. In contrary, legume specifc cowpea aphid, A. craccivora when released on B. juncea plants fails to build up population and thus remains unsuccessful in infestation. In the present study, diferential host response of B. juncea to the two aphid species, one being successful insect-pest and the other being unsuccessful on it has been studied based on transcriptome analysis. Diferential feeding efciency of the two aphid species on mustard plants was evident from the amount of secreted honeydews. Leaf-transcriptomes of healthy and infested plants, treated with the two aphid species, were generated by RNA sequencing on Illumina platform and de novo assembly of the quality reads. A comparative assessment of the diferentially expressed genes due to treatments revealed a large extent of overlaps as well as distinctness with respect to the set of genes and their direction of regulation. With respect to host-genes related to transcription factors, oxidative homeostasis, defense hormones and secondary metabolites, L. erysimi led to either suppression or limited activation of the transcript levels compared to A. craccivora. Further, a comprehensive view of the DEGs suggested more potential of successful insect-pests towards transcriptional reprogramming of the host. qRT-PCR based validation of randomly selected up- and down-regulated transcripts authenticated the transcriptome data.Not Availabl

Resynthesis of Brassica juncea: enriching gene pool for mustard improvement

Not AvailableNot AvailableNot Availabl

Brassica juncea Lines with Substituted Chimeric GFP-CENH3 Give Haploid and Aneuploid Progenies on Crossing with Other Lines

Haploids and doubled haploids are invaluable for basic genetic studies and in crop improvement. A novel method of haploid induction through genetic engineering of the Centromere Histone Protein gene, CENH3, has been demonstrated in Arabidopsis. The present study was undertaken to develop haploid inducer (HI) lines of Brassica juncea based on the principles elaborated in Arabidopsis. B. juncea was found to carry three copies of CENH3 which generated five different transcripts, of which three transcripts resulted from alternative splicing. Unlike Arabidopsis thaliana where native CENH3 gene was knocked out for constructing HI lines, we used RNAi approach to knockdown the native CENH3 genes. Further, to rescue CENH3 silenced cells, a GFP-CENH3-tailswap construct having N terminal GFP fused to H3.3 tail sequences and synthetic CENH3 histone fold domain sequences was devised. A total 38 transgenic B. juncea plants were regenerated following co-transformation with both silencing and rescue cassettes and transgenics carrying either or both the constructs were obtained. Transgenic status was confirmed through PCR, Southern and qRT-PCR analyses. Co-transformed lines were crossed to untransformed B. juncea or a line expressing only GFP-tailswap. FACS and cytological analyses of progenies revealed partial or complete elimination of B. juncea chromosomes thereby giving rise to aneuploids and haploid. This is the first report in a polyploid crop demonstrating that CENH3 engineering could be used to develop HI lines