Human malarial disease: a consequence of inflammatory cytokine release

Malaria causes an acute systemic human disease that bears many similarities, both clinically and mechanistically, to those caused by bacteria, rickettsia, and viruses. Over the past few decades, a literature has emerged that argues for most of the pathology seen in all of these infectious diseases being explained by activation of the inflammatory system, with the balance between the pro and anti-inflammatory cytokines being tipped towards the onset of systemic inflammation. Although not often expressed in energy terms, there is, when reduced to biochemical essentials, wide agreement that infection with falciparum malaria is often fatal because mitochondria are unable to generate enough ATP to maintain normal cellular function. Most, however, would contend that this largely occurs because sequestered parasitized red cells prevent sufficient oxygen getting to where it is needed. This review considers the evidence that an equally or more important way ATP deficency arises in malaria, as well as these other infectious diseases, is an inability of mitochondria, through the effects of inflammatory cytokines on their function, to utilise available oxygen. This activity of these cytokines, plus their capacity to control the pathways through which oxygen supply to mitochondria are restricted (particularly through directing sequestration and driving anaemia), combine to make falciparum malaria primarily an inflammatory cytokine-driven disease

High Quality Draft Genome of Arogyapacha (Trichopus zeylanicus), an Important Medicinal Plant Endemic to Western Ghats of India

Arogyapacha, the local name of Trichopus zeylanicus, is a rare, indigenous medicinal plant of India. This plant is famous for its traditional use as an instant energy stimulant. So far, no genomic resource is available for this important plant and hence its metabolic pathways are poorly understood. Here, we report on a high-quality draft assembly of approximately 713.4 Mb genome of T. zeylanicus, first draft genome from the genus Trichopus. The assembly was generated in a hybrid approach using Illumina short-reads and Pacbio longer-reads. The total assembly comprised of 22601 scaffolds with an N50 value of 433.3 Kb. We predicted 34452 protein coding genes in T. zeylanicus genome and found that a significant portion of these predicted genes were associated with various secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways. Comparative genome analysis revealed extensive gene collinearity between T. zeylanicus and its closely related plant species. The present genome and annotation data provide an essential resource to speed-up the research on secondary metabolism, breeding and molecular evolution of T. zeylanicus

Wearable Device for Health Care Applications

Emotion recognition through physiological recording is an emerging field of research with many promising results. This work is involved in the construction of a device used to identify basic human emotions indexed by Electro Dermal Activity (EDA) in real time, using a non-invasive sensor attached to a wrist band. We refer to the system as "E Lock-Holmes". The device measures changes in Skin Conductance Level (SCL) caused due to stimulating signals from brain which results from sympathetic neural activity using Ag/AgCl electrodes placed on the ventral side of the distal forearm to evaluate the emotions of the user outside the constrained laboratory environment without interrupting the normal daily routine. The device consists of an embedded system for EDA signal acquisition and a wireless communication module to send processed EDA signals to a remote system. A vibrator attached to the device is used to provide user feedback