EVALUATION OF THE PROPHYLACTIC ROLE OF INDIAN SHRIMP IN ALUMINUM CHLORIDE-INDUCED ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE ON EXPERIMENTAL RATS

Objective: This work was aimed to investigate the prophylactic and therapeutic role of Indian shrimp in aluminum chloride-induced Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in rats. Methods: The male Wistar rats were selected and divided into six groups. Group I received distilled water, Group II received AlCl3 ( 100 mg/kg, p.o.), Group III received rivastigmine (1 mg/kg, p.o.), Group IV received AlCl3 + shrimp powder (200 mg/kg, p.o), and Group V received AlCl3 + shrimp powder (400 mg/kg, p.o) for 60 days. At the end of the study, various parameters such as behavioral and biochemical investigations were assessed. Results: The result of the study shows that the shrimp (400 mg/kg) has better effect on the treatment of aluminum chloride-induced AD in rats. It showed a remarkable improvement in the behavioral and biochemical parameters, and the result of histopathology study shows that the hippocampus region of brain tissue recovered as compared with control. Conclusion: From this study, it is evident that dietary intake of shrimp can help to inhibit oxidative stress produced due to the accumulation of AlCl3 in the brain and used as a prophylactic for AD

A study on the defluoridation in water by using natural soil

Removal of excess fluoride (F−) from the water has been attempted by several authors by using different materials both natural and artificial. The main aim of this paper was to attempt the fluoride removal by using the locally available red soil adopting column method. The red soil was mixed in different proportion with sand in order to increase the porosity and permeability property of the medium. It was optimized for 4:1 ratio of red soil to sand and it was used for the following experiment. The experiment was conducted in 11 batches for a period of about 9,213 min. Fresh standard solution of F was used in each batch, prepared from Orion 1,000 ppm solution. The samples were collected and analyzed for pH, EC (Electrical Conductivity) and HCO3. Rate of flow of water and efficiency of adsorption were calculated and compared with the fluoride removal capacities of the medium. The medium used for the fluoride removal was subjected to FTIR analysis before and after the experiment. The variation of IR spectrum before and after treatment signifies the changes in the OH bonding between Al and Fe ions present in the soil. The variation in pH decreased during the course of defluoridation. Higher F removal was noted when flow rate was lesser. An attempt on the regeneration of the fluoride adsorbed soil was also made and found to be effective

Plasma von Willebrand factor levels predict in-hospital survival in patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Circulating levels of von Willebrand factor (vWF) predict mortality in patients with cirrhosis. We hypothesized that systemic inflammation in acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) will stimulate endothelium, increase vWF levels, and promote platelet microthrombi causing organ failure. METHODS: In this prospective study, we correlated plasma vWF levels with organ failure, liver disease severity, sepsis, and systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and also analyzed if vWF levels predicted in-hospital composite poor outcome (i.e. death/discharged in terminal condition/liver transplantation) in consecutive ACLF patients. RESULTS: Twenty-one of the 50 ACLF patients studied had composite poor outcome. ACLF patients had markedly elevated vWF antigen and activity (sevenfold and fivefold median increase, respectively) on days 1 and 3. Median ratio of vWF to a disintegrin and metalloprotease with thrombospondin type 1 motif, member 13 (ADAMTS13) activity on day 1 was significantly higher in ACLF patients (11.2) compared to 20 compensated cirrhosis patients (3.3) and healthy volunteers (0.9). On day 1, area under ROC curve (AUROC) to predict composite poor outcome of hospital stay for ACLF patients for vWF antigen, vWF activity, and model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score were 0.63, 0.68, and 0.74, respectively. vWF activity correlated better with liver disease severity (MELD score, ACLF grade) and organ failure (Sequential Organ Failure Assessment [SOFA] score) than vWF antigen; in contrast, neither vWF antigen nor activity correlated with platelet count, sepsis, or SIRS. CONCLUSIONS: vWF levels are markedly elevated, correlate with organ failure, and predict in-hospital survival in ACLF patients. This data provides a mechanistic basis for postulating that vWF-reducing treatments such as plasma exchange may benefit ACLF patients

New Samarium and Neodymium based admixed ferromagnets with near zero net magnetization and tunable exchange bias field

Rare earth based intermetallics, SmScGe and NdScGe, are shown to exhibit near zero net magnetization with substitutions of 6 to 9 atomic percent of Nd and 25 atomic percent of Gd, respectively. The notion of magnetic compensation in them is also elucidated by the crossover of zero magnetization axis at low magnetic fields (less than 103 Oe) and field-induced reversal in the orientation of the magnetic moments of the dissimilar rare earth ions at higher magnetic fields. These magnetically ordered materials with no net magnetization and appreciable conduction electron polarization display an attribute of an exchange bias field, which can be tuned. The attractively high magnetic ordering temperatures of about 270 K, underscore the importance of these materials for potential applications in spintronics.Comment: 6 page text + 5 figure

Growing electrostatic modes in the isothermal pair plasma of the pulsar magnetosphere

It is shown that a strongly magnetized isothermal pair plasma near the surface of a pulsar supports low-frequency (in comparison to electron cyclotron frequency) toroidal electrostatic plasma modes in the equatorial region. Physically, the thermal pressure coupled with the magnetic pressure creates the low frequency oscillations which may grow for particular case of inhomogeneities of the equilibrium magnetic field and the pair plasma density.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Science 201

Delivering bioavailable micronutrients through biofortifying sorghum and seed chain innovations

Micronutrient malnutrition, particularly among women and children, is one of greatest global challenges of our times and the national Governments and international organizations are following various approaches to combat it. Biofortification –increasing the micronutrient density in edible plant parts by genetic means, is one of the cost-effective and sustainable methods to address the micronutrient malnutrition. Sorghum is one of the major staples globally and it meets more than 50% micronutrient requirements of low-income group populations in predominantly sorghum eating areas. We developed biofortified sorghums with elevated levels of grain Fe and Zn combined with higher grain yield possessing farmer-preferred grain and stover traits. The first biofortified sorghum cultivar ‘Parbhani Shakti’ was released in India in 2018, which, besides high Fe and Zn, has higher protein content and lower phytates content. An innovative ‘Seed Consortium’ was built to take this variety to the farmers in shortest possible time to benefit the farmers and consumers. Multi-stakeholder partnership was the key in this endeavour and Indian NARS, farmers, public sector seed organisations, media and Government played a key role along with ICRISAT

A chromosome-level genome assembly of Solanum chilense, a tomato wild relative associated with resistance to salinity and drought

Introduction: Solanum chilense is a wild relative of tomato reported to exhibit resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. There is potential to improve tomato cultivars via breeding with wild relatives, a process greatly accelerated by suitable genomic and genetic resources. Methods: In this study we generated a high-quality, chromosome-level, de novo assembly for the S. chilense accession LA1972 using a hybrid assembly strategy with ~180 Gbp of Illumina short reads and ~50 Gbp long PacBio reads. Further scaffolding was performed using Bionano optical maps and 10x Chromium reads. Results: The resulting sequences were arranged into 12 pseudomolecules using Hi-C sequencing. This resulted in a 901 Mbp assembly, with a completeness of 95%, as determined by Benchmarking with Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO). Sequencing of RNA from multiple tissues resulting in ~219 Gbp of reads was used to annotate the genome assembly with an RNA-Seq guided gene prediction, and for a de novo transcriptome assembly. This chromosome-level, high-quality reference genome for S. chilense accession LA1972 will support future breeding efforts for more sustainable tomato production. Discussion: Gene sequences related to drought and salt resistance were compared between S. chilense and S. lycopersicum to identify amino acid variations with high potential for functional impact. These variants were subsequently analysed in 84 resequenced tomato lines across 12 different related species to explore the variant distributions. We identified a set of 7 putative impactful amino acid variants some of which may also impact on fruit development for example the ethylene-responsive transcription factor WIN1 and ethylene-insensitive protein 2. These variants could be tested for their ability to confer functional phenotypes to cultivars that have lost these variants.This work was jointly supported by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Indian Department of Biotechnology (BB/L011611/1)