ANTISNAKE VENOM PROPERTIES OF MEDICINAL PLANTS

Snake envenoming and consequent deaths are of common occurrence in tropical and subtropical regions. Approximately 1,25,000 deaths are witnessed every year and WHO has declared it as a neglected tropical disease in 2009. The immunotheraphy is the only treatment available, but it has side effects like serum sickness, pyrogen reactions moreover the non availability and storage problems has rendered the mankind to look in others sources to treat snake bite deaths. This has led to the investigation of naturally available antidotes or the herbal antidotes. The plants were used by humans from centuries to treat diseases which have become an ancient knowledge which are passed through the generations. Many scientific investigations have been carried out on the grounds of folk knowledge. Some of the plants include Aristolochia indica, Andrographis paniculata, Hemidesmus indicus, Vitis vinifera etc., many metabolites have also been isolated which show promising pharmacological inhibitory effect on the toxic snake venom. Further exploration and characterization of molecules would be able to provide an alternative to the existent Antisnake venom. Â

Isolation, Purification, and Characterization of Fungal Laccase from Pleurotus sp.

Laccases are blue copper oxidases (E.C. 1.10.3.2 benzenediol: oxygen oxidoreductase) that catalyze the one-electron oxidation of phenolics, aromatic amines, and other electron-rich substrates with the concomitant reduction of O2 to H2O. They are currently seen as highly interesting industrial enzymes because of their broad substrate specificity. A positive strain was isolated and characterized as nonspore forming Basidiomycetes Pleurotus sp. Laccase activity was determined using ABTS as substrate. Laccase was purified by ionexchange and gel filtration chromatography. The purified laccase was a monomer showed a molecular mass of 40 ± 1 kDa as estimated by SDS-PAGE and a 72-fold purification with a 22% yield. The optimal pH and temperature were 4.5 and 65°C, respectively. The Km and Vmax values are 250 (mM) and 0.33 (μmol/min), respectively, for ABTS as substrate. Metal ions like CuSO4, BaCl2, MgCl2, FeCl2, ZnCl2 have no effect on purified laccase whereas HgCl2 and MnCl2 moderately decrease enzyme activity. SDS and sodium azide inhibited enzyme activity, whereas Urea, PCMB, DTT, and mercaptoethanol have no effect on enzyme activity. The isolated laccase can be used in development of biosensor for detecting the phenolic compounds from the effluents of paper industries

ACETYLCHOLINESTERASE INHIBITORY EFFECT OF 3-(1H-INDOL-3-YL)-1, 3-DIPHENYLPROPAN-1-ONE DERIVATIVES

Objective: The objective of the study is acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitory effect of 3-(1H-indol-3-yl)-1, 3-diphenylpropan-1-one derivatives by Ellman's method, physostigmine is used as positive control.Method: 3-(1H-indol-3-yl)-1, 3-diphenylpropan-1-one derivatives were synthesized by the addition of chalcone (0.25 g, 1 mmol), indole (0.12 g, 1 mmol) in ethanol (5 ml), and concentrated hydrochloric acid (5 mmol %). These earlier synthesized compounds were screened for AChE inhibitors by modifying Ellman's method.Results: Among the tested compounds, 3a and 3j were found to be having more potential than other compounds with half maximal inhibitory concentration values of 13.64 and 14.3 μg/ml, respectively. Whereas, compounds 3c, 3e, 3g, and 3i exhibited an average AChE inhibition of 16.4, 17.9, 17.6, and 21.1 μg/ml, respectively.Conclusion: The compounds 3-(1H-indol-3-yl)-1, 3-diphenylpropan-1-one derivatives were found to be possible lead molecules in AChE inhibition and even though, the molecules were structurally dissimilar to that of the standard, still they exhibited a considerable degree of inhibition and encourage the researchers to look into the mode of action of their inhibition ability against AChE

Isolation, Purification and Biochemical Characterization of CGTase from Bacillus halodurans

A novel Cyclomaltodextrin glucanotransferase (CGTase) producer, Bacillus halodurans was isolated from soil obtained from sugarcane fi elds. CGTase was produced in bulk through submerged batch fermentation in Horikoshi’s Media II. Soluble starch was used as carbon source and a combination of yeast extract and peptone were used as nitrogen source in the media, along with MgSO4.7H2O, K2HPO4 and Na2CO3, as they were found to be ideal for CGTase production. The enzyme was purified through acetone precipitation and starch adsorption methods, which proved to be simple and effi cient methods of purifi cation. Starch adsorption purifi ed sample was found to be homogenous on performing SDS-PAGE and the yield of the method was 49.44% with fold purifi cation of 17.34. The enzyme had appreciable affi nity for starch with a Km of 1.1mM and a turnover number of 10.9s-1 and was found to have an apparent molecular weight of ≈33 KDa. CGTase had two pH optima at pH 7.0 and pH 9.0 and a temperature optimum of 600C. There was no effect of metal-chelating agents on enzyme activity indicating that the enzyme is not a metalloenzyme, however it is a metal-activated enzyme as activity was enhanced by Mn²+. Inhibitory effects of group specific reagents indicate that serine and histidine residues may be involved in enzyme activity. The microorganism isolated grows in a wide range of temperatures, pH and salt concentrations, which are useful attributes in industrial applications requiring versatile organisms. The enzyme isolated also has appreciable activity at higher temperature and pH and is easily purified; making it valuable for use in industry

ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF METHANOLIC ROOT EXTRACT OF TABERNAEMONTANA ALTERNIFOLIA L

Objective: The infectious diseases caused by bacteria are a major problem and most of them are resistant to the present antibiotics. Also the free radicals act on structural and functional architecture of the cell in turn lead to cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of the cell. In this regard plants would have molecules alternative to antibiotics with higher safety, efficiency and will play a key role in maintaining human health.Methods: In this study antimicrobial activity of methanolic crude extract of Tabernaemontana alternifolia root extract was determined by an agar gel diffusion method against Bacillus flexus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Proteus aureus and E. coli bacteria, Aspergillus terreus and Scopulariopsis sp. fungi. Antioxidant potential of root extract was determined by ABTS assay and DPPH method.Results: The methanolic root extracts of T. alternifolia posses significant antibacterial activity and reducing power. The significant inhibition was observed at 250, 500, 750, 1000µg/ml for Bacillus flexus, Proteus aureus bacteria. Staphylococcus aureus was inhibited at 1000µg/ml concentration of the plant extracts. Crude extract inhibited DPPH with IC50 value 250 µg/ml and ABTS with IC50 value 600 µg/ml. No antifungal activity was observed.Conclusion: The overall result can conclude that T. alternifolia root posses marked antibacterial activity and anti oxidant activity at lower concentration of plant extract.Â

Ethnomedicinal plants and isolated compounds against Snake venom activity: A review

491-505Snakebite is an occupational hazard that has affected the population in tropical and subtropical countries. Worldwide approximately 5.4 million bites, 2.7 million envenomations, and 81,000-1,38,000 deaths are observed per annum. The incidences are higher among farmers and plantation workers. Antivenom is the only treatment available and the production of the same is challenging due to geographical variation of snakes, storage conditions, and non-availability of venom for production. Antivenom therapy is associated with immediate or delayed hypersensitivity and does not prevent local tissue damage. Thus the search for medicinal plants by the scientific community has become relevant. The ethnobotanical studies on various plants have revealed their use to treat various ailments including snakebite. Hence, the review is aimed to amass the medicinal plants studied and also emphasize various components isolated that have shown promising results

Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO

The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in April of 2019 and lasting six months, O3b starting in November of 2019 and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in April of 2020 and lasting 2 weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main dataset, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figure

Population of Merging Compact Binaries Inferred Using Gravitational Waves through GWTC-3

We report on the population properties of compact binary mergers inferred from gravitational-wave observations of these systems during the first three LIGO-Virgo observing runs. The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 3 (GWTC-3) contains signals consistent with three classes of binary mergers: binary black hole, binary neutron star, and neutron star-black hole mergers. We infer the binary neutron star merger rate to be between 10 and 1700 Gpc-3 yr-1 and the neutron star-black hole merger rate to be between 7.8 and 140 Gpc-3 yr-1, assuming a constant rate density in the comoving frame and taking the union of 90% credible intervals for methods used in this work. We infer the binary black hole merger rate, allowing for evolution with redshift, to be between 17.9 and 44 Gpc-3 yr-1 at a fiducial redshift (z=0.2). The rate of binary black hole mergers is observed to increase with redshift at a rate proportional to (1+z)κ with κ=2.9-1.8+1.7 for z≲1. Using both binary neutron star and neutron star-black hole binaries, we obtain a broad, relatively flat neutron star mass distribution extending from 1.2-0.2+0.1 to 2.0-0.3+0.3M⊙. We confidently determine that the merger rate as a function of mass sharply declines after the expected maximum neutron star mass, but cannot yet confirm or rule out the existence of a lower mass gap between neutron stars and black holes. We also find the binary black hole mass distribution has localized over- and underdensities relative to a power-law distribution, with peaks emerging at chirp masses of 8.3-0.5+0.3 and 27.9-1.8+1.9M⊙. While we continue to find that the mass distribution of a binary's more massive component strongly decreases as a function of primary mass, we observe no evidence of a strongly suppressed merger rate above approximately 60M⊙, which would indicate the presence of a upper mass gap. Observed black hole spins are small, with half of spin magnitudes below χi≈0.25. While the majority of spins are preferentially aligned with the orbital angular momentum, we infer evidence of antialigned spins among the binary population. We observe an increase in spin magnitude for systems with more unequal-mass ratio. We also observe evidence of misalignment of spins relative to the orbital angular momentum

Search for Eccentric Black Hole Coalescences during the Third Observing Run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass $M>70$ $M_\odot$) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities $0 < e \leq 0.3$ at $0.33$ Gpc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$ at 90\% confidence level.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure