Ruptured subcapsular hepatic hematoma complicating severe preeclampsia with haemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelet count syndrome: a case report

Subcapsular liver hematoma is rare complication of severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome, thus making it essential for these patients to be followed up in critical and intensive care units for advanced medical support with fluid and electrolyte management and replacement of blood products while treating underlying disorders. Treatment options have to be individualised and vary from conservative management to surgical treatment including hepatic resection, hepatic artery ligation, and liver transplantation. In this paper we report a case of ruptured hepatic hematoma in a 35 year old female, few hours within delivery, a complication of severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrom

Distinguishing Proof and Utilization of Resistance of Insect Pests in Grain Legumes: Progress and Limitations

Major food legumes including chickpea, pigeon pea, cowpea, field pea, lentil, faba bean, black gram, green gram, and Phaseolus beans play a vital role in food, nutritional security, and sustainable crop production. Several insect pests damage grain legumes, of which Helicoverpa armigera; Maruca vitrata; Etiella zinckenella; Spodoptera litura and S. exigua; Melanagromyza obtusa; Ophiomyia phaseoli; Aphis craccivora and Bemisia tabaci; Empoasca spp., Megalurothrips dorsalis, and Caliothrips indicus; Mylabris spp.; and Callosobruchus chinensis crusade extensive losses. Appreciable progress has been made in formulating techniques to evaluate germplasm, mapping populations, and genetically modified crops for resistance to insect pests under field and greenhouse conditions. No-choice and dual-choice cage screening techniques, detached leaf assay, and diet incorporation assays have been standardized to screen for resistance to major insect pests in grain legumes. However, some of these techniques cannot be used to screen against stem flies, pod fly, leafhoppers, thrips, and aphids. There is a need to develop methods for mass multiplication of aforesaid insects to undertake precise phenotyping for resistance to these insects. There is a necessity to identify lines with different resistance mechanisms/components of resistance for gene pyramiding to explicate cultivars with the stable source of resistance to insect pests. Prominent levels of resistance to the pod borers have been found in the wild accessions of chickpea, pigeon pea, and cowpea, which can be exploited to introgress genes to heighten the levels and diversify the basis of resistance to insect pests to build host plant resistance a viable component of pest management in grain legumes for sustainable crop production

Biochemical mechanisms of induced resistance to Chilo partellus in sorghum

Host plant resistance is an important component of pest management, and information on contribution of different mechanisms of resistance is important for developing cultivars with resistance to the target pests. Therefore, induced resistance was studied in five sorghum genotypes against Chilo partellus by using infested and non-infested plants under greenhouse conditions. The activity of plant defensive enzymes and the secondary metabolites were recorded at 7 days after infestation and their induction varied among the genotypes and treatments. The resistant sorghum genotypes ICSV 700, IS 2205 and ICSV 93046 suffered lower leaf damage by the neonate larvae of C. partellus (damage rating (DR) 2.8–3.7) as compared to the susceptible checks, ICSV 1 and Swarna (DR 6.4 and 7.0, respectively). ICSV 700, IS 2205 and ICSV 93046 exhibited greater enzymatic activity [peroxidase (POD), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) and tyrosine ammonia lyase (TAL)] and had more amounts of phenols than the susceptible check, Swarna. This information will be useful for developing sorghum genotypes with resistance to C. partellus for sustainable crop production

Assessing the impact of varietal resistance and planting dates on pest spectrum in chickpea

The cotton bollworm Helicoverpa armigera [Hübner (1808)] is one of the most widely spread pest which limits the chickpea production, while the beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua (Hübner, 1808) has emerged as a serious pest in recent years, in southern India and parasitic wasp Campoletis chlorideae Uchida, 1968 is an important larval parasitoid which naturally manages both pests under field condition. Insecticides adoption leads to development of resistance in pod borer. In view of climate change scenario, the focus of the present studies was the identification of climate resilient cultivars of chickpea for pod borers and the results reveled, that there were significant variations in the level of eggs and larval population among the genotypes. Across seasons, the crop sown in October recorded the maximum number of eggs. ‘ICC 3137’ had the highest number of H. armigera eggs (11.6) across seasons. ‘JG 11’, (6.3) in 2012 and’ ICCV 10’ (3.6) in 2013 recorded the lowest number of H. armigera eggs. During 2014-15, the maximum(80.7) H. armigera larval incidence was observed in October sown crop and the lowest (21.1) in January crop. The number of S. exigua larvae were substantially higher in the December crop. For all seasons, the highest number of C. chlorideae were found in October crop. Across seasons, multiple regression analysis for both pest had a strong interaction with weather patterns

Effect of varied weather parameters and different sowing dates on the incidence of insect pest in chickpea

It is important to identify genotypes with resistance varied sowing windows. Therefore, evaluated a five diverse genotypes for resistance to H. armigera for three years over four sowing window. More number of eggs were observed in 2012 than in 2013 and 2014. Highest numbers of eggs were recorded in the crop sown in October in cumulative three seasons. Among the genotypes tested, ICC 3137 had the highest number of H. armigera eggs (11.6) across the seasons. The lowest number of H. armigera eggs was observed on JG 11 (6.3) in 2012, on ICCV 10 (3.6) in 2013. The H. armigera larvae were highest in October sown crop (80.7) and lowest in the January sown crop (21.1) in 2014-15. The larval incidence decreased from October to December but increased in the January. Greater numbers of cocoons were recorded in the December sown crop (3.4) in 2012-13.However highest number of cocoons were recorded on ICC 3137 (2.5) and lowest on KAK 2 (1.6). The maximum temperature and minimum temperature shows a significant negative and positive correlation with H. armigera larvae population for October and November sown crop. Multiple regression analysis of the H. armigera, S. exigua eggs and larval population showed a significant interaction with weather parameters during all cropping seasons. The coefficient of multiple determinations (R2) was varied per cent during across different seasons for H. armigera, S. exigua populatio

Climate change effects on pest spectrum and incidence in grain legumes

Global warming and climate change will influence activity, diversity, distribution and population dynamics of insect pests including the grain legumes. Several insect pests damage grain legume crops, of which the pod borer, Helicoverpa armigera; spotted pod borer, Maruca vitrata; spiny pod borer, Etiella zinckenella; pod fly, Melanagromyza obtusa; aphid, Aphis craccivora; defoliators, Spodoptera litura and S. exigua; thrips, Megaleurothrips usitatus and Caliothrips indicus and the bruchid, Callasobruchus chinensis cause extensive losses in grain legumes. The incidence and extent of losses due to these pests varies across seasons, locations, and cropping systems. The pest spectrum on grain legumes will change considerably due to impending global warming and climate change. The geographical distribution of some of the pests might extend to temperate regions in Europe and America, while the outbreaks of some other pests will become more frequent. Several outbreaks of pod borer, H. armigera and spotted pod borer, M. vitrata have been recorded on grain legumes in India, which at times have resulted in complete crop loss. The scale insect, Ceroplastodes cajani in pigeonpea and beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua, mealy bug, Ferrisia virgata, and white fly, Bemisia tabaci in chickpea have emerged as new pests; while leaf miner, Porphyrosela neodoxa, mealy bugs, Drepanococcus cajani, and Coccidohystrix insolita are some of the emerging pest problems in pigeonpea in India. In addition, there will be greater genotype x environment interactions for expression of resistance to insect pests, and this warrants a greater effort for identification of diverse sources of resistance and need for integrated pest management packages that will be effective under global warming and climate change

Structural analysis of the regulatory GAF domains of cGMP phosphodiesterase elucidates the allosteric communication pathway

Regulation of photoreceptor phosphodiesterase (PDE6) activity is responsible for the speed, sensitivity, and recovery of the photoresponse during visual signaling in vertebrate photoreceptor cells. It is hypothesized that the physiological differences in the light responsiveness of rods and cones may result in part from differences in the structure and regulation of the distinct isoforms of rod and cone PDE6. Although rod and cone PDE6 catalytic subunits share a similar domain organization consisting of tandem GAF domains (GAFa and GAFb) and a catalytic domain, cone PDE6 is a homodimer whereas the rod PDE6 catalytic dimer is composed of two homologous catalytic subunits. Here we provide the x-ray crystal structure of cone GAFab regulatory domain solved at 3.3 Å resolution in conjunction with chemical cross-linking and mass spectrometric analysis of conformational changes to GAFab induced upon binding of cGMP and the PDE6 inhibitory γ-subunit (Pγ). Ligand-induced changes in cross-linked residues implicate the α4-helix of GAFa (close to the cGMP binding site) and the β1/β2 loop of GAFb as key motifs that have been previously proposed to communicate with the catalytic domains of PDE6. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of cone GAFab revealed asymmetry in the two GAFab subunits forming the homodimer and allosteric perturbations on cGMP binding. Cross-linking of Pγ to GAFab in conjunction with solution NMR spectroscopy of isotopically labeled Pγ identified the central polycationic region of Pγ interacting with the GAFb domain. These results provide a mechanistic basis for developing allosteric activators of PDE6 with therapeutic implications for halting the progression of certain retinal degenerative diseases

An international study evaluating elemental analysis

A statistical study on elemental analysis for 5 small organic compounds at 18 independent service providers across multiple countries demonstrates variation in the returned results that is outside journal guidelines (0.4%) in greater than 10% of measurements. The results indicate that a deviation of 0.4% is not a realistic journal requirement with the variability attributed to random error

Exploring the Conformational Transitions of Biomolecular Systems Using a Simple Two-State Anisotropic Network Model

Biomolecular conformational transitions are essential to biological functions. Most experimental methods report on the long-lived functional states of biomolecules, but information about the transition pathways between these stable states is generally scarce. Such transitions involve short-lived conformational states that are difficult to detect experimentally. For this reason, computational methods are needed to produce plausible hypothetical transition pathways that can then be probed experimentally. Here we propose a simple and computationally efficient method, called ANMPathway, for constructing a physically reasonable pathway between two endpoints of a conformational transition. We adopt a coarse-grained representation of the protein and construct a two-state potential by combining two elastic network models (ENMs) representative of the experimental structures resolved for the endpoints. The two-state potential has a cusp hypersurface in the configuration space where the energies from both the ENMs are equal. We first search for the minimum energy structure on the cusp hypersurface and then treat it as the transition state. The continuous pathway is subsequently constructed by following the steepest descent energy minimization trajectories starting from the transition state on each side of the cusp hypersurface. Application to several systems of broad biological interest such as adenylate kinase, ATP-driven calcium pump SERCA, leucine transporter and glutamate transporter shows that ANMPathway yields results in good agreement with those from other similar methods and with data obtained from all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, in support of the utility of this simple and efficient approach. Notably the method provides experimentally testable predictions, including the formation of non-native contacts during the transition which we were able to detect in two of the systems we studied. An open-access web server has been created to deliver ANMPathway results. © 2014 Das et al

Substrate binding and translocation of the serotonin transporter studied by docking and molecular dynamics simulations

The serotonin (5-HT) transporter (SERT) plays an important role in the termination of 5-HT-mediated neurotransmission by transporting 5-HT away from the synaptic cleft and into the presynaptic neuron. In addition, SERT is the main target for antidepressant drugs, including the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The three-dimensional (3D) structure of SERT has not yet been determined, and little is known about the molecular mechanisms of substrate binding and transport, though such information is very important for the development of new antidepressant drugs. In this study, a homology model of SERT was constructed based on the 3D structure of a prokaryotic homologous leucine transporter (LeuT) (PDB id: 2A65). Eleven tryptamine derivates (including 5-HT) and the SSRI (S)-citalopram were docked into the putative substrate binding site, and two possible binding modes of the ligands were found. To study the conformational effect that ligand binding may have on SERT, two SERT–5-HT and two SERT–(S)-citalopram complexes, as well as the SERT apo structure, were embedded in POPC lipid bilayers and comparative molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were performed. Our results show that 5-HT in the SERT–5-HTB complex induced larger conformational changes in the cytoplasmic parts of the transmembrane helices of SERT than any of the other ligands. Based on these results, we suggest that the formation and breakage of ionic interactions with amino acids in transmembrane helices 6 and 8 and intracellular loop 1 may be of importance for substrate translocation