Biological Diversity Act, 2002: Shadow of permit-raj over research

It is too late in history of the world to think that there is time to produce ordered classifications of all plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms, and then to employ these classifications to seek new kinds of generalities while these organisms are still extant. –Peter Rave

The Applications and the current status of silver nanoparticles in the field of Orthodontics

Nanotechnology over past decades, has emerged as a mainstay in various fields and has been employed in various biomedical applications. It is currently being extensively used in the manufacture of drugs, as a diagnostic aid, in implants, as a prosthetic material and in tissue engineering. With the recent introduction of advanced Nano robotic models in local anesthetic procedures, the applications and importance of nanotechnology in the field of healthcare have gained renewed impetus. This review primarily throws light on the current applications of silver nanoparticles in the field of Dentistry, emphasizing on orthodontics in particular, with regard to their antimicrobial properties, anti-cariogenic effects, Nano silver coating applications of orthodontic brackets, micro implants, biocompatibility analysis and fixed orthodontic appliances

Optimization and Evaluation of the Physical Properties of a Functional Tooth Cream Formulation Containing Cocos Nucifera Extracts for Remineralization of White Spot Lesions

Background: Modern toothpaste formulations incorporate various active ingredients designed to preserve enamel integrity and provide an effective cleaning experience. However, their effectiveness in preventing and managing white spot lesions in orthodontic patients is still under debate. A detailed examination of these active ingredients\u27 functional properties is essential to maximize their benefits. This study aimed to optimize a functional toothpaste formulation containing Cocos nucifera extracts for the remineralization of white spot lesions and to assess its physical properties in comparison to commercially available ACP-CCP toothpaste formulations.Materials and Methods: Freshly extracted coconut was sourced from the local farm. Pulp was grated and equally split into two halves. One part of the prepared pulp extract was ground in a motor, and milk was extracted. This was then stored at -4 degrees. The other part was lyophilized and free dried at -80 degrees. This was then ground into a paste. Both of these extracts were separately used in the preparation of two tooth cream formulations of Cocos nucifera. The two tooth cream formulations, along with a commercial formulation of ACP- CCP paste, were taken separately, and the physical properties of these materials were then evaluated. These included color, odor, taste, smoothness, relative density, tube inertness, homogeneity, determination of spreadability, sharp and edge abrasive particle determination, foamability, moisture, and volatile matter determination. Results: The formulated toothpastes, bright white with aromatic odor and satisfactory taste, demonstrated good consistency, smooth texture, stability, and appropriate pH levels (control: 10, C. Milk: 8.7, L. Coconut: 9). Abrasiveness tests revealed 5% abrasive particles in C. Milk and less than 20% in L. Coconut, with equal foamability across samples. Spreadability was highest in the control, moderate in C. Milk, and lowest with visible abrasives in L. Coconut.Conclusion: The study successfully formulated novel tooth creams from Cocos nucifera pulp extracts, with the coconut milk paste demonstrating comparatively better results in consistency, stability, and spreadability than the lyophilized coconut paste and showing similar properties to commercial ACP-CCP tooth cream

Formulation and in-Vitro Characterization of a Novel Herbal Tooth Serum With Activated Charcoal and Cocos Nucifera Extracts for Enamel Remineralization

Background: An ideal novel herbal tooth serum should possess potent antiplaque and remineralizing properties, effectively combating dental plaque buildup while promoting the restoration of tooth enamel. It should be free from powerful chemicals, artificial flavors, or dyes, ensuring a natural and gentle oral care experience. With a balanced abrasive effect, it must efficiently remove surface stains without causing irritation or toxicity, thus safeguarding oral health. Aim: Combining the efficacy of various natural resources, this study aims toformulate and assess the physical properties of a novel tooth serum incorporating activated charcoal and Cocos nucifera extracts.Materials and Methodology: The herbal tooth serum was prepared by using the dry gum method. The novel herbal tooth serum incorporates activated charcoal and extracts of Cocos nucifera as a remineralizing agent alongside calcium silicate and hydroxyapatite, facilitating the natural mineralization of enamel. Gentle abrasives such as silica and calcium carbonate ensure effective yet mild cleaning action, while limonene, an antibacterial essential oil, enhances oral hygiene. The formulation is fortified with cinnamon and thyme extracts, serving as antioxidants, and sorbitol functions as a natural sweetener. The base ingredients include aqua, glycerin, and cellulose gum, providing a stable and user-friendly activator gel. Other powdered ingredients are shifted together and added gradually to the mucilaginous mixture with continuously gentle stirring in a conical flask. The exact proportion of the tooth serum ingredients for 100 g of tooth serum was measured and taken, and physical properties were evaluated.Results: The physical properties, such as color, homogeneity, spreadability, foamability and pH, were determined and evaluated. The color was black and stable with no staining ; the mixture was smooth with no abrasive particles, and the pH was optimum for intraoral usage.Conclusion: A herbal tooth serum with activated charcoal and Cocos nucifera extracts was formulated with ideal physical properties that could serve as a natural alternative to synthetic tooth serums used in dentistry for enamel remineralization

Association of age and caries experience among adult population - An institutional study

Oral health is closely related with general health and people’s quality of life, through affecting their oral functions and social interactions. Dental caries are the major concerns among oral health.The aim of the study is to assess caries experience based on Decayed Missing Filled Teeth Index (DMFT) index among adults patients visiting a private dental college in Chennai. DMFT index was used to evaluate the caries experience. Patient case sheets were reviewed, index scores and age of the patients were collected . 4567 patients were selected for the study and tabulated in excel sheet and statistically analysed using SPSS. Frequency distribution was done using descriptive statistics and Chisquare test was used to analyse the association of caries experience with different age groups. In this study, it was observed that 18-35 year old patients were most prevalent (47.7%) and DMFT scores ranging from 0-7 were maximum with 58.2%. Within the limits of the study, results of the study showed that DMFT score of more than 8 suggesting higher caries experience was prevalent in study participants above 55 years of age. DMFT score of 0-7 was the most prevalent score among 18-35 years and 36-55 years

Influence of ECM Composition and Intracellular Calcium on Endothelial Biomechanics and Prediction of Cellular Stresses Using Machine Learning

Endothelial cells, which form the inner layer of the vasculature, constantly interact with their external microenvironment called the extracellular matrix (ECM) by exerting contractile cell-substrate stresses called tractions and cell-cell stresses called intercellular stresses. This cellular mechanosensing can become aberrant and act as a precursor for many vascular pathological and physiological processes such as cancer metastasis, atherosclerosis, cell differentiation, migration, and morphogenesis. Also, intracellular calcium signalling plays an important role in endothelial cell motility and in maintaining vascular tone. Alteration in ECM composition has been linked to several pathologies, in fact, a transition to a fibronectin-rich matrix from a type I collagen-rich and elastin-rich matrix in coronary artery disease, for example. However, the influence of ECM compositions and intracellular calcium levels on cell mechanics is not clearly understood. The first study will shed light on ECM composition and its influence on endothelial mechanical properties including traction, intercellular stresses, cell velocity, and various morphological parameters. The second study will enhance our knowledge on the role calcium signaling plays on cellular tractions. The final chapters will focus on the development and utilization of Machine Learning (ML) models for the predictions of tractions and intercellular stresses with morphological and pharmacological predictors, which to our knowledge is the first work in the field. The results yielded from this work will further our understanding of cellular mechanics at the mesoscale by: i) Identifying the role of specific ECM molecules in mechanical signaling, ii) Understanding the influence of transient calcium signaling on tractions, and iii) Providing a machine learning framework that can be used for the prediction of tractions and intercellular stresses as a dose dependent response to a drug that is known to influence cell mechanics. These findings will be beneficial to drug development studies and targeted drug therapy for treating various vascular-related pathologies

LINCS Canvas Browser: interactive web app to query, browse and interrogate LINCS L1000 gene expression signatures

For the Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures (LINCS) project many gene expression signatures using the L1000 technology have been produced. The L1000 technology is a cost-effective method to profile gene expression in large scale. LINCS Canvas Browser (LCB) is an interactive HTML5 web-based software application that facilitates querying, browsing and interrogating many of the currently available LINCS L1000 data. LCB implements two compacted layered canvases, one to visualize clustered L1000 expression data, and the other to display enrichment analysis results using 30 different gene set libraries. Clicking on an experimental condition highlights gene-sets enriched for the differentially expressed genes from the selected experiment. A search interface allows users to input gene lists and query them against over 100 000 conditions to find the top matching experiments. The tool integrates many resources for an unprecedented potential for new discoveries in systems biology and systems pharmacology. The LCB application is available at http://www.maayanlab.net/LINCS/LCB. Customized versions will be made part of the http://lincscloud.org and http://lincs.hms.harvard.edu websites

Intersection Dimension and Maximum Degree

We show that the intersection dimension of graphs with respect to several hereditary graph classes can be bounded as a function of the maximum degree. As an interesting special case, we show that the circular dimension of a graph with maximum degree ∆ is at most O(∆ log ∆ log log ∆ ). We also obtain bounds in terms of treewidth

Chronic cisplatin treatment promotes enhanced damage repair and tumor progression in a mouse model of lung cancer

Chemotherapy resistance is a major obstacle in cancer treatment, yet the mechanisms of response to specific therapies have been largely unexplored in vivo. Employing genetic, genomic, and imaging approaches, we examined the dynamics of response to a mainstay chemotherapeutic, cisplatin, in multiple mouse models of human non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We show that lung tumors initially respond to cisplatin by sensing DNA damage, undergoing cell cycle arrest, and inducing apoptosis—leading to a significant reduction in tumor burden. Importantly, we demonstrate that this response does not depend on the tumor suppressor p53 or its transcriptional target, p21. Prolonged cisplatin treatment promotes the emergence of resistant tumors with enhanced repair capacity that are cross-resistant to platinum analogs, exhibit advanced histopathology, and possess an increased frequency of genomic alterations. Cisplatin-resistant tumors express elevated levels of multiple DNA damage repair and cell cycle arrest-related genes, including p53-inducible protein with a death domain (Pidd). We demonstrate a novel role for PIDD as a regulator of chemotherapy response in human lung tumor cells.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant 5-UO1-CA84306)National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (CA034992

SNP-based pathway enrichment analysis for genome-wide association studies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recently we have witnessed a surge of interest in using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to discover the genetic basis of complex diseases. Many genetic variations, mostly in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), have been identified in a wide spectrum of diseases, including diabetes, cancer, and psychiatric diseases. A common theme arising from these studies is that the genetic variations discovered by GWAS can only explain a small fraction of the genetic risks associated with the complex diseases. New strategies and statistical approaches are needed to address this lack of explanation. One such approach is the pathway analysis, which considers the genetic variations underlying a biological pathway, rather than separately as in the traditional GWAS studies. A critical challenge in the pathway analysis is how to combine evidences of association over multiple SNPs within a gene and multiple genes within a pathway. Most current methods choose the most significant SNP from each gene as a representative, ignoring the joint action of multiple SNPs within a gene. This approach leads to preferential identification of genes with a greater number of SNPs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We describe a SNP-based pathway enrichment method for GWAS studies. The method consists of the following two main steps: 1) for a given pathway, using an adaptive truncated product statistic to identify all representative (potentially more than one) SNPs of each gene, calculating the average number of representative SNPs for the genes, then re-selecting the representative SNPs of genes in the pathway based on this number; and 2) ranking all selected SNPs by the significance of their statistical association with a trait of interest, and testing if the set of SNPs from a particular pathway is significantly enriched with high ranks using a weighted Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We applied our method to two large genetically distinct GWAS data sets of schizophrenia, one from European-American (EA) and the other from African-American (AA). In the EA data set, we found 22 pathways with nominal P-value less than or equal to 0.001 and corresponding false discovery rate (FDR) less than 5%. In the AA data set, we found 11 pathways by controlling the same nominal P-value and FDR threshold. Interestingly, 8 of these pathways overlap with those found in the EA sample. We have implemented our method in a JAVA software package, called <it>SNP Set Enrichment Analysis </it>(SSEA), which contains a user-friendly interface and is freely available at <url>http://cbcl.ics.uci.edu/SSEA.</url></p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The SNP-based pathway enrichment method described here offers a new alternative approach for analysing GWAS data. By applying it to schizophrenia GWAS studies, we show that our method is able to identify statistically significant pathways, and importantly, pathways that can be replicated in large genetically distinct samples.</p