OVERVIEW STUDY ON MURRAYA KOENIGII (MITHA NEEM): RUTACEAE

Murraya koenigii (Rutaceae) commonly known as “Curry leaves†and “Meetha neemâ€. It is an important leafy vegetable. Its leaves are widely used in Indian cookery for flavouring foodstuffs. The leaves are used traditionally as spice. The aim of the present study is to information about classification, origin, morphological characters, traditionally use of Murraya koenigii by tribal community of Jhunjhunu District of Rajasthan in many cures of diseases. Keywords: Medicinal Plant, Traditionally, Antibacterial, Antioxidan

A STUDY ON MEDICINAL HERB SPINACIA OLERACEAE LINN: AMARANTHACEAE

Spinacia oleracea is an edible green vegetable plant, belong to the family of Amaranthaceae. Spinacia oleracea have various pharmacological activities such as anti-oxidant, anti-proliferative, anti-inflammatory, anti-histaminic and hepatoprotective. The present paper is an attempt to provide a detailed botanical description, classification, nutrient contents, traditional uses and pharmacological properties of this medicinal herb. Keywords: Medicinal Plant, Hepatoprotective, Natural drug, Non-toxi

Perinatal lethal skeletal dysplasia: a case report

The word dysplasia originates from ancient Greek words dys (anomalous) and plasia (formation). Skeltal dysplasia (SD) is a heterogeneous group of congenital anomalies characterized by abnormalities in the development of the bone and cartilage tissue. This results in mark disproportion of the long bones, the spine and fetal head relation to the trunk. Perinatal lethal skeletal dysplasia leads to still birth or early neonatal death due to pulmonary hypoplasia. 30 yrs old G3P3L2 at 32 weeks presented with leaking per vaginum. Her serial scan was done as she had previous stillborn male child with short limbs. Her antenatal scan revealed short limbs from 24 weeks. From18 weeks to 24 weeks she did not underwent any sonography. She went into spontaneous labor and delivered still born male baby with clinical and radiological features suggestive of skeletal dysplasia. Skeletal dysplasia can be diagnosed on antenatal 2 D ultrasound from 14 - 16 weeks onwards. Prenatal genetic testing should be done to diagnose the genetic anomaly and patient should be referred to higher institute for this test. Even if genetic test not done even then termination of pregnancy should be considered based on ultrasound diagnosis especially with family history because of poor fetal prognosis and long term morbidity if survived

Correlation study to predict water quality for drinking purpose

ABSTRACT The present study on river Pandu was carried out to assess water quality indicators and correlation between physico-chemical parameters. The study clearly revealed that river is polluted to a considerable extent all through its entire stretch passing through Kanpur. High values of pollution indicating parameters noticed in the present study. The severely polluted stretch lies between stations 2 & 4 and to a considerable distance further downstream of station 4.Water at none of the stations is fit to be used as a source of potable water in the light of mandatory values recommended by I.S. I (IS;229

MEDICINAL POTENTIAL OF LANTANA CAMARA: VERBENACEAE

Lantana camara is a shrub that belongs to the family of Verbanaceae. Lantana camara is one such notorious weed which is affecting ecosystem, and causing biodiversity loss at greater extent. It is highly invasive and currently occupies a large percentage of the vegetation cover wherever it was introduced. But, Lantana camara is well known to cure several diseases and used in various folk medicinal preparations. It used in many pharmacological activities. These studies established the therapeutic potential of Lantana camara in modern medicines and a possible candidate for the drug discovery. The present review aims to document the taxonomy, ecology, morphology and medicinal properties of L. camara. Key words: Invasive, Ecology, Medicinal, Pharmacological, Weed

INSECTICIDAL AND GENOTOXIC POTENTIAL OF ACORUS CALAMUS RHIZOME EXTRACT AGAINST DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER

ABSTRACTObjectives: Insect pest problems in agriculture have a considerable shift during first decade of 21st century due to global climate changes. Varioussynthetic insecticides were used from last 50 years to overcome the pest problem, but major concerns in using these pesticides were: Public healthand pesticide resistance in pests. To abolish the catastrophic effect of synthetic insecticides, urgent need to develop new drugs for pest control. In thisstudy we evaluate the insecticidal and genotoxic activity of ethanolic extract of Acorus calamus rhizome against Drosophila melanogaster.Methods: Different concentration of ethanolic extracts of A. calamus, fed to different developmental stages of D. melanogaster to determine insecticidalactivity and genotoxicity; genotoxicity was determined by the comet assay in male flies.Results: Lethal concentration 50 (LC50) values of ethanolic extract against larvae, adult males and females of D. melanogaster were 109.54, 52.51 and41.11 mg/L respectively. Genotoxicity of adult's flies were determined at 30 and 55 mg/L ethanolic extract of A. calamus, The mean comet tail lengthwas 4.24±0.653 μm and 6.13±0.721 μm and the respective DNA damage was 5.1% and 7.3% with reference to controls.Conclusion: The present finding suggests that ethanolic extract of A. calamus rhizome showed higher insecticidal potential in adults than larvaeof D. melanogaster. Results from genotoxicity studies further support the insecticidal activity against adult stages of D. melanogaster. The studyreflects ethanolic extract of A. calamus could be used as an alternative pest control negotiator for minimizing the noxious effects of pesticides in theenvironment.Keywords: Insecticidal activity, Genotoxicity, Ethanolic extract, Botanical pesticides, Acorus calamus, Drosophila melanogaster

IDENTIFICATION OF INHIBITORS OF DENGUE VIRUS (DENV1, DENV2 AND DENV3) NS2B/ NS3 SERINE PROTEASE: A MOLICULAR DOCKING AND SIMULATION APPROACH

 Dengue is one of the fatal diseases, which are becoming a global health burden from few decades. Dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever anddengue shock syndrome, caused by dengue virus (DENV), which completes its life cycle in mosquito i.e. Aedes aegyti, and human (DENV), and infectabout various individuals every year. The objective of this study is to find a potent inhibitor of DENV (DENV1, DENV2 and DENV3). In the presentstudy, NS2b/NS3 serine protease complex in targeted for the screening of the suitable inhibitors for DENV (DENV1, DENV2 and DENV 3). Therefore,the NS2b/NS3 serine protease complex structures were retrieved from the RCSB Protein Databank. The unliganded protein structures were docked,and best three selected and analyzed. A molecular dynamic simulation is also performed to investigate the conformational and positional changesof ligand that provide insights into the binding stability. It was observed that three of screened compounds have the maximum potential against theprotein. The analysis was performed on the basis of scoring and binding ability and one of them indicated minimum energy score with high numberof interactions with active site residues and the simulation study revealed that this selected ligand could efficiently bind to the NS2b/NS3 protease.These findings conclude that this selected ligand could be a promising inhibitor of all three serotypes of DENV as drug targets.Keywords: Dengue virus, Aedes aegyti, Flaviviridae, Serine protease, Docking

AffyMAPSDetector: a software tool to characterize Affymetrix GeneChip™ expression arrays with respect to SNPs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Affymetrix gene expression arrays incorporate paired perfect match (PM) and mismatch (MM) probes to distinguish true signals from those arising from cross-hybridization events. A MM signal often shows greater intensity than a PM signal; we propose that one underlying cause is the presence of allelic variants arising from single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). To annotate and characterize SNP contributions to anomalous probe binding behavior we have developed a software tool called AffyMAPSDetector.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>AffyMAPSDetector can be used to describe any Affymetrix expression GeneChip™ with respect to SNPs. When AffyMAPSDetector was run on GeneChip™ HG-U95Av2 against dbSNP-build-123, we found 7286 probes (belonging to 2,582 probesets) containing SNPs, out of which 325 probes contained at least one SNP at position 13. Against dbSNP-build-126, 8758 probes (belonging to 3,002 probesets) contained SNPs, of which 409 probes contained at least one SNP at position 13. Therefore, depending on the expressed allele, the MM probe can sometimes be the transcript complement. This information was used to characterize probe measurements reported in a published, well-replicated lung adenocarcinoma study. The total intensity distributions showed that the SNP-containing probes had a larger negative mean intensity difference (PM-MM) and greater range of the difference than did probes without SNPs. In the sample replicates, SNP-containing probes with reproducible intensity ratios were identified, allowing selection of SNP probesets that yielded unique sample signatures. At the gene expression level, use of the (MM-PM) value for SNP-containing probes resulted in different Presence/Absence calls for some genes. Such a change in status of the genes has the clear potential for influencing downstream clustering and classification results.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Output from this tool characterizes SNP-containing probes on GeneChip™ microarrays, thus improving our understanding of factors contributing to expression measurements. The pattern of SNP binding examined so far indicates distinct behavior of the SNP-containing probes and has the potential to help us identify new SNPs. Knowing which probes contain SNPs provides flexibility in determining whether to include or exclude them from gene-expression intensity calculations; selected sets of SNP-containing probes produce sample-unique signatures.</p> <p>AffyMAPSDetector information is available at <url>http://www.binf.gmu.edu/weller/BMC_bioinformatics/AffyMapsDetector/index.html</url></p

Atmospheric Aerosols Monitoring: Ground and Satellite-Based Instruments

Aerosols are submicron particles suspended in the atmosphere which affect Earth’s energy balance directly by scattering and absorbing the of solar radiation. In addition, they can indirectly affect radiation balance by changing the micro-physical and optical properties of the cloud. The difficulties in accessing the contribution of aerosols to radiative balance are caused partly due to incomplete knowledge of spatiotemporal variabilities in physicochemical and optical properties of aerosols on regional to global scale. Several state-of-the-art instrumentation techniques for ground-based measurements and satellite remote sensing technologies have been developed in past three decades to monitor physicochemical and optical properties of aerosols for a better understanding of radiative balance and feedback mechanisms. Satellite retrievals of moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS), ozone monitoring instrument (OMI), multi-angle imaging spectroradiometer (MISR) are used for this purpose. Ground-based measurements of aerosol properties provide a basis for validation of atmospheric correction procedures and can be used for validation of aerosol models used in atmospheric correction algorithms. This chapter describes in details about the widely used ground- and satellite-based remote sensing instruments for aerosol monitoring

A rare case of broad ligament hematoma masquerading ovarian malignancy in a post-menopausal woman: a case report

Spontaneous broad ligament hematomas are relatively rare in non- pregnant state. We hereby present a case report of a 73 year old post-menopausal female, who initially presented with complain of postmenopausal bleeding since 4 month. Patient had underwent a diagnostic endometrial curettage in an another hospital, prior to presenting to our institution. On imaging, she was found to have a right sided complex adenexal mass (about 5cm in size) suspicious of ovarian malignancy. Patient was taken up for exploratory laparotomy and per-operatively found to have a broad ligament hematoma, which was further confirmed on histopathological examination