Chicken Eggshell as a Potential Eco-friendly, Low-cost Sorbent: A Mini Review

Water and soil are the basic needs of human being. Urbanization and industrialization activities are growing day by day, as we know mining, smelting, agriculture, and other industrial enterprises etc. are playing a vital role in any country’s economic growth. But these anthropogenic activities create a somber environmental pollution. For the sustainability of green environment, many studies have reviewed for the removal of toxic heavy metal i.e. ion exchange, reverse osmosis, chemical precipitation, flocculation, electrolysis, coagulation etc. however, these methods have several disadvantages such as unpredictable metal ion removal, toxic sludge generation, requirement of huge amount of reagents etc. Adsorption is a very easy, cost-effective process that has become a best-preferred technique for the removal of toxic heavy metal contamination in soil and water. Cost is the important factor for the selection of adsorbent material and the expense of individual adsorbent varies depending upon its local availability and the degree of processing. Several natural adsorbent materials are available in the world. This paper reviews the use of highly efficient, cheap and readily accessible kitchen waste eggshell. Eggshell is one of the most environmental friendly and cost effective sorbent, due to high CaCO3 concentration, which helps to restrain heavy metals, fluoride, phenol, and petrol etc. from contaminated soil and water, due to its physiochemical properties eggshell has many applications in the field of bioremediation, material, and metallurgical sciences. This sorbent is being proved to be a more useful and environmental friendly. Keywords: Adsorption, Anthropogenic, Eggshell, Heavy metals contamination, Low-cost sorbent

Identification of transcription factors that regulate ATG8 expression and autophagy in Arabidopsis

Autophagy is a conserved catabolic process in eukaryotes that contributes to cell survival in response to multiple stresses and is important for organism fitness. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the core machinery of autophagy is well defined, but its transcriptional regulation is largely unknown. The ATG8 (autophagy-related 8) protein plays central roles in decorating autophagosomes and binding to specific cargo receptors to recruit cargo to autophagosomes. We propose that the transcriptional control of ATG8 genes is important during the formation of autophagosomes and therefore contributes to survival during stress. Here, we describe a yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) screen for transcription factors (TFs) that regulate ATG8 gene expression in Arabidopsis, using the promoters of 4 ATG8 genes. We identified a total of 225 TFs from 35 families that bind these promoters. The TF-ATG8 promoter interactions revealed a wide array of diverse TF families for different promoters, as well as enrichment for families of TFs that bound to specific fragments. These TFs are not only involved in plant developmental processes but also in the response to environmental stresses. TGA9 (TGACG (TGA) motif-binding protein 9)/AT1G08320 was confirmed as a positive regulator of autophagy. TGA9 overexpression activated autophagy under both control and stress conditions and transcriptionally up-regulated expression of ATG8B, ATG8E and additional ATG genes via binding to their promoters. Our results provide a comprehensive resource of TFs that regulate ATG8 gene expression and lay a foundation for understanding the transcriptional regulation of plant autophagy

Identification of transcription factors that regulate ATG8 expression and autophagy in Arabidopsis

Autophagy is a conserved catabolic process in eukaryotes that contributes to cell survival in response to multiple stresses and is important for organism fitness. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the core machinery of autophagy is well defined, but its transcriptional regulation is largely unknown. The ATG8 (autophagy-related 8) protein plays central roles in decorating autophagosomes and binding to specific cargo receptors to recruit cargo to autophagosomes. We propose that the transcriptional control of ATG8 genes is important during the formation of autophagosomes and therefore contributes to survival during stress. Here, we describe a yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) screen for transcription factors (TFs) that regulate ATG8 gene expression in Arabidopsis, using the promoters of 4 ATG8 genes. We identified a total of 225 TFs from 35 families that bind these promoters. The TF-ATG8 promoter interactions revealed a wide array of diverse TF families for different promoters, as well as enrichment for families of TFs that bound to specific fragments. These TFs are not only involved in plant developmental processes but also in the response to environmental stresses. TGA9 (TGACG (TGA) motif-binding protein 9)/AT1G08320 was confirmed as a positive regulator of autophagy. TGA9 overexpression activated autophagy under both control and stress conditions and transcriptionally up-regulated expression of ATG8B, ATG8E and additional ATG genes via binding to their promoters. Our results provide a comprehensive resource of TFs that regulate ATG8 gene expression and lay a foundation for understanding the transcriptional regulation of plant autophagy.This is a manuscript of an article published as Wang, Ping, Trevor M. Nolan, Yanhai Yin, and Diane C. Bassham. "Identification of transcription factors that regulate ATG8 expression and autophagy in Arabidopsis." Autophagy (2019). doi: 10.1080/15548627.2019.1598753. Posted with permission.</p

Engineering of a Bacillus amyloliquefaciens Strain with High Neutral Protease Producing Capacity and Optimization of Its Fermentation Conditions.

The neutral protease has high potential for industrial applications, and attempts to improve enzyme expression level have important application values. In the present study, a neutral protease-encoding gene, Banpr, was cloned from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain K11, and a genetic manipulation method specific for this difficult-to-transform strain was developed for the high-level expression of neutral protease. The recombinant plasmid pUB110-Banpr was constructed in Bacillus subtilis strain WB600 and then transformed into strain K11 under optimized conditions. A positive transformant 110N-6 with the highest protease secreting capacity on skim milk plates and great genetic stability for more than 100 generations was selected for further study. Optimization of the fermentation conditions increased the enzyme activity of strain 110N-6 to 8995 ± 250 U/ml in flask culture and 28084 ± 1282 U/ml in 15-l fermentor, which are significantly higher than that of the native strain K11 and industrial strain B. subtilis AS.1398, respectively. The high expression level and extreme genetic stability make B. amyloliquefaciens strain 110N-6 more favorable for mass production of neutral protease for industrial uses

Optimization of culture conditions for <i>Ba</i>NPR production in <i>Bacillus amyloliqufaciens</i> 110N-6.

<p>a Effect of temperature on enzyme production. b Effect of pH on enzyme production. c Effect of working volume on enzyme production. d Effect of inoculum size on enzyme production. e Effect of different amino acids on enzyme production. f Effect of different metal ions on enzyme production. Each value in the panel represents the means ± SD (n = 3).</p

SDS-PAGE analysis of recombinant <i>Ba</i>NPR in <i>Bacillus amyloliquefaciens</i> K11.

<p>Lane: M, the molecular mass standards; 1–3 and 5–7, the different transformants harboring pUB110-<i>Banpr</i>; 4, the transformant harboring the empty vector pUB110.</p

Multiple amino acid sequence alignment of NPR.

<p>Amino acid sequence alignment of <i>Ba</i>NPR from <i>Bacillus amyloliquefaciens</i> K11 with the NPR from <i>Bacillus amyloliquefaciens</i> Y2, NPRE from <i>Bacillus amyloliquefaciens</i> (<i>Bacillus velezensis</i>) (P06832), NPRE from <i>Bacillus subtilis</i> 168 (P68736), NPRE from <i>Bacillus cereus</i> (P05806), THER from <i>Bacillus thermoproteolyticus</i> (P00800), and NPRE from <i>Bacillus caldolyticus</i> (P23384) using the ClustalW program. Two histidine residues in active site are indicated by asterisks.</p

Robotic Assay for Drought (RoAD): an automated phenotyping system for brassinosteroid and drought responses

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a group of plant steroid hormones involved in regulating growth, development, and stress responses. Many components of the BR pathway have previously been identified and characterized. However, BR phenotyping experiments are typically performed in a low-throughput manner, such as on Petri plates. Additionally, the BR pathway affects drought responses, but drought experiments are time consuming and difficult to control. To mitigate these issues and increase throughput, we developed the Robotic Assay for Drought (RoAD) system to perform BR and drought response experiments in soil-grown Arabidopsis plants. RoAD is equipped with a robotic arm, a rover, a bench scale, a precisely controlled watering system, an RGB camera, and a laser profilometer. It performs daily weighing, watering, and imaging tasks and is capable of administering BR response assays by watering plants with Propiconazole (PCZ), a BR biosynthesis inhibitor. We developed image processing algorithms for both plant segmentation and phenotypic trait extraction to accurately measure traits including plant area, plant volume, leaf length, and leaf width. We then applied machine learning algorithms that utilize the extracted phenotypic parameters to identify image-derived traits that can distinguish control, drought-treated, and PCZ-treated plants. We carried out PCZ and drought experiments on a set of BR mutants and Arabidopsis accessions with altered BR responses. Finally, we extended the RoAD assays to perform BR response assays using PCZ in Zea mays (maize) plants. This study establishes an automated and non-invasive robotic imaging system as a tool to accurately measure morphological and growth-related traits of Arabidopsis and maize plants in 3D, providing insights into the BR-mediated control of plant growth and stress responses.This is the published version of the following article: Xiang, Lirong, Trevor M. Nolan, Yin Bao, Mitch Elmore, Taylor Tuel, Jingyao Gai, Dylan Shah et al. "Robotic Assay for Drought (RoAD): an automated phenotyping system for brassinosteroid and drought responses." The Plant Journal 107, no. 6 (2021): 1837-1853. DOI: 10.1111/tpj.15401. Copyright 2021 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Posted with permission

Integrated omics reveal novel functions and underlying mechanisms of the receptor kinase FERONIA in Arabidopsis thaliana

The receptor kinase FERONIA (FER) is a versatile regulator of plant growth and development, biotic and abiotic stress responses, and reproduction. To gain new insights into the molecular interplay of these processes and to identify new FER functions, we carried out quantitative transcriptome, proteome, and phosphoproteome profiling of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) wild-type and fer-4 loss-of-function mutant plants. Gene ontology terms for phytohormone signaling, abiotic stress, and biotic stress were significantly enriched among differentially expressed transcripts, differentially abundant proteins, and/or misphosphorylated proteins, in agreement with the known roles for FER in these processes. Analysis of multiomics data and subsequent experimental evidence revealed previously unknown functions for FER in endoplasmic reticulum (ER) body formation and glucosinolate biosynthesis. FER functions through the transcription factor NAI1 to mediate ER body formation. FER also negatively regulates indole glucosinolate biosynthesis, partially through NAI1. Furthermore, we found that a group of abscisic acid (ABA)-induced transcription factors is hypophosphorylated in the fer-4 mutant and demonstrated that FER acts through the transcription factor ABA INSENSITIVE5 (ABI5) to negatively regulate the ABA response during cotyledon greening. Our integrated omics study, therefore, reveals novel functions for FER and provides new insights into the underlying mechanisms of FER function