Risk Assessment in Specialised Home gardens of Kerala

Home gardens have emerged as the best agricultural production system in Kerala due to limiting land availability and the shrinking operational land unit. Time and act of commercialization have transformed the homegardens to more diversified and specialized home gardens. A critical study of risks in the specialized homegarden production systems is the need of the hour to enhance its productivity. This paper analyses the various risk factors in home gardens

Techno-Socio-Economic Dimensions of Specialized Home Gardens

The paper on home gardens delineates the techno-socio-economic dimensions of specializations in home gardens involving a total of 90 respondents from Thiruvanthapuram district in Kerala that comprised 60 specialized home garden farmers and 30 Agricultural Officers. Commercial interest has transformed this subsistence production system, to a means of additional income generation system with the inclusion of various specializations such as aquaculture, floriculture, sericulture and animal husbandry thus making it unique, ever-evolving and dynamic system. Different techno-socio- economic dimensions would have contributed to specializations in home gardens and hence the study was imperative. The results revealed that 11 out of 27 dimensions were perceived to be important. The results also revealed that the relevancy pattern differed for both specialized home garden farmers and agricultural officers wherein a few dimensions perceived to be important by farmers were actually not a concern for agricultural officers and vice versa

A two phase age dependent and two-mutation stochastic model of carcinogenesis

An age dependent and two-mutation stochastic model of carcinogenesis is formulated and studied. In this model, we introduce a fitness age T, (a positive constant) for each cell to divide into two cells. A normal cell if its age is not greater than T either divides into two normal cells or divides into one normal cell and one intermediate cell or dies. A normal cell if its age is greater than T either divides into one normal cell and one intermediate cell, or divides into two intermediate cells or dies. An intermediate cell if its age is not greater than T divides into two intermediate cells or divides into one intermediate cell and one malignant cell or dies. An intermediate cell if its age is greater than T divides into one intermediate cell and one malignant cell or divides into two malignant cells or dies. It is assumed that, once a malignant cell is produced, it generates a malignant tumor with probability 1. We obtain the mean numbers of normal, intermediate and malignant cells. It is shown that the production of malignant cells in one-mutation model is faster than that in two-mutation model. A numerical illustration is presented to highlight the performance of the model

UFASOMES: UNSATURATED FATTY ACID BASED VESICULAR DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM

Various novel drug delivery systems have been developed encompassing several administration routes to deliver drugs at a rate decided as per the need of the body during the course of treatment and to achieve targeted therapy, also decreases undesirable side effects. Different types of vesicular drug delivery systems were developed, such as liposomes, niosomes, ufasomes etc. Ufasomes are unsaturated fatty acid vesicles which is a suspension of closed lipid bilayer formed from fatty acid and their ionized species having limited, narrow pH ranging from 7-9. Composition of fatty acid molecules is such that the hydrocarbon tails are pointed towards the inner core of the membrane and the carboxyl group are in touch with water. Stable ufasomes preparation mainly relies on appropriate choice of fatty acid, cholesterol quantity, range of the pH, buffer and lipoxygenase amount. Recent innovation provides very efficient features such as stability considerations, dynamic features and microscopic features of ufasomes. The article furthermore provides the difference between ufasomes with liposomes. For this review, the complete databases have been collected from various search engines such as researchgate, elsevier, pubmed, sciencedirect, google scholar, scopus etc., from the year 1965-2020 using the following keywords

A prospective study on assessment of risk factors and impact of patient counselling in health-related quality of life of patients with coronary artery diseases

Background: Cardiovascular disease is the most frequent cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. The aim of the study was to determine assessment of risk factors and impact of patient counseling in health-related quality of life of the patient.Method: This was a prospective observational study conducted in the department of cardiology. A suitably designed standard SF-36 questionnaire was given to all patients enrolled in the study before and after counseling. All information relevant to the study were collected in suitably designed proforma from case records and discussions conducted with the patients and bystanders during ward rounds. Proper counseling was given to patients and bystanders and the score was analyzed using SAS descriptive analysis.Result: The most common risk factors encountered in the study are diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidemia, irregular exercise, smoking, alcoholism, obesity and family history. The health-related quality of life of the patients were assessed, a total of 67 patients QOL was improved after counseling and 27 patients with no improvement. We found that patient counseling was effective for majority of patients.Conclusions: We can conclude that the role of clinical pharmacist has a significant role in improving the health-related quality of life of patients through proper counseling. And more than half of the patients have a modifiable risk factor which can be managed through lifestyle modifications

Survey Among Medical Students During COVID-19 Lockdown: The Online Class Dilemma

Background: In view of COVID-19 lockdown in India, many colleges started online classes. This study aimed to evaluate the attitudes of, and the factors affecting, medical students attending online classes during lockdown. Methods: We designed an online questionnaire with open-ended, close-ended, and Likert scale questions. Links to the questionnaires were shared with the medical students who have attended at least one online class during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Respondents were 1061 participants from 30 medical colleges from the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu in India. Results: The majority of students – 94% (955/1016) – used smartphones to attend online classes. ZOOM/ Skype – by 57.1% (580/1016) – and Google platforms – by 54.4% (553/1016) – were commonly used. Learning at leisure – 44.5% (452/1016) – was the top reason why students liked online classes, whereas network problems – 85.8% (872/1016) – was the top reason why students disliked them. Lack of sufficient interaction – 61.1% (621/1016) was another reason why students disliked online learning. More than half the participants – 51.7% (526/1016) – did not want to continue online classes after COVID-19 lockdown. More students – 55% (558/1016) – favored regular classes than online classes. Conclusion: Students in our survey did not seem favorably disposed to online classes. Network problems experienced by students should be addressed. Furthermore, teachers should try to make the classes more interactive and educational institutions should address the problems pointed out by the students in order to make online classes more effective in the future

Site-selective generation of lanthanoid binding sites on proteins using 4-fluoro-2,6-dicyanopyridine

The paramagnetism of a lanthanoid tag site-specifically installed on a protein provides a rich source of structural information accessible by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. Here we report a lanthanoid tag for selective reaction with cysteine or selenocysteine with formation of a (seleno)thioether bond and a short tether between the lanthanoid ion and the protein backbone. The tag is assembled on the protein in three steps, comprising (i) reaction with 4-fluoro-2,6-dicyanopyridine (FDCP); (ii) reaction of the cyano groups with α-cysteine, penicillamine or β-cysteine to complete the lanthanoid chelating moiety; and (iii) titration with a lanthanoid ion. FDCP reacts much faster with selenocysteine than cysteine, opening a route for selective tagging in the presence of solvent-exposed cysteine residues. Loaded with Tb3+ and Tm3+ ions, pseudocontact shifts were observed in protein NMR spectra, confirming that the tag delivers good immobilisation of the lanthanoid ion relative to the protein, which was also manifested in residual dipolar couplings. Completion of the tag with different 1,2-aminothiol compounds resulted in different magnetic susceptibility tensors. In addition, the tag proved suitable for measuring distance distributions in double electron–electron resonance experiments after titration with Gd3+ ions.This research has been supported by the Australian Research Council (grant no. FL170100019 and DP210100088), the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science (grant no. CE200100012) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF; PostDoc grant no. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/2/18/381)

TILLING - a shortcut in functional genomics

Recent advances in large-scale genome sequencing projects have opened up new possibilities for the application of conventional mutation techniques in not only forward but also reverse genetics strategies. TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes) was developed a decade ago as an alternative to insertional mutagenesis. It takes advantage of classical mutagenesis, sequence availability and high-throughput screening for nucleotide polymorphisms in a targeted sequence. The main advantage of TILLING as a reverse genetics strategy is that it can be applied to any species, regardless of its genome size and ploidy level. The TILLING protocol provides a high frequency of point mutations distributed randomly in the genome. The great mutagenic potential of chemical agents to generate a high rate of nucleotide substitutions has been proven by the high density of mutations reported for TILLING populations in various plant species. For most of them, the analysis of several genes revealed 1 mutation/200–500 kb screened and much higher densities were observed for polyploid species, such as wheat. High-throughput TILLING permits the rapid and low-cost discovery of new alleles that are induced in plants. Several research centres have established a TILLING public service for various plant species. The recent trends in TILLING procedures rely on the diversification of bioinformatic tools, new methods of mutation detection, including mismatch-specific and sensitive endonucleases, but also various alternatives for LI-COR screening and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) discovery using next-generation sequencing technologies. The TILLING strategy has found numerous applications in functional genomics. Additionally, wide applications of this throughput method in basic and applied research have already been implemented through modifications of the original TILLING strategy, such as Ecotilling or Deletion TILLING

Aberrant epithelial GREM1 expression initiates colonic tumorigenesis from cells outside the stem cell niche

Hereditary mixed polyposis syndrome (HMPS) is characterized by the development of mixed-morphology colorectal tumors and is caused by a 40-kb genetic duplication that results in aberrant epithelial expression of the gene encoding mesenchymal bone morphogenetic protein antagonist, GREM1. Here we use HMPS tissue and a mouse model of the disease to show that epithelial GREM1 disrupts homeostatic intestinal morphogen gradients, altering cell fate that is normally determined by position along the vertical epithelial axis. This promotes the persistence and/or reacquisition of stem cell properties in Lgr5-negative progenitor cells that have exited the stem cell niche. These cells form ectopic crypts, proliferate, accumulate somatic mutations and can initiate intestinal neoplasia, indicating that the crypt base stem cell is not the sole cell of origin of colorectal cancer. Furthermore, we show that epithelial expression of GREM1 also occurs in traditional serrated adenomas, sporadic premalignant lesions with a hitherto unknown pathogenesis, and these lesions can be considered the sporadic equivalents of HMPS polyps