Detection and comparison of light metals in hair among workers of different industries using Particle Induced X-Ray Emission (PIXE) for forensic casework

Background: The study was planned to evaluate the deposition of some metals in the scalp hair of the people working in the particular environment. Scalp hair samples were collected from different industry workers including pharmaceutical, textile and paint industry and analyzed for the determination of aluminum (Al), calcium (Ca), potassium (K) and sulfur (S). Hair analysis provides a better assessment of light metals present in the surroundings, as well as monitoring of variation of metals from place to place.Methods: The hair samples were collected from 21-55 years old employees working in industry for more than four years. Workers of the age less than 20 years and less than 4 years working experience were not including in this study. Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) system was used to detect the light metals from hair and probable matches were searched through National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) library.Results: The metals Al, S, K and Ca concentration was found maximum in the pharmaceutical industry workers. i.e., 575.1 µg/g, 190.7 µg/g, 11.1 µg/g and 9.1 µg/g respectively. The minimum concentration so these metals was found in paint industry workers i.e. 103.7 µg/g, 8.87 µg/g, 2.3 µg/g, and 1.7µg/g respectively.Conclusion: Light metal concentrations in hair samples showed a significant positive correlation. Our findings can play vital role for health departments and industrial environmental management system (EMS) authorities in policy making and implementation. Taken all together, the workers were facing minor health implications in these industries and need immediate protective measures to remediate the current situation. Keywords: Forensic, Scalp Hair Analysis, Particle Induced X-ray Emissio

Effects of temperature and water purity on germination and yield of mungbean sprouts

Mungbean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek) is a popular pulse crop, producing protein-rich food and nitrogen-rich residues. Mungbean sprouts were grown at different temperature levels of 10, 20 and 30°C in various water purities of 30 (distilled water), 100, 400, 700 and 1000 TDS (ppm). After keeping them in the germination chamber for 72 h, the percentage of germination, stem length and yield along with proximate composition were determined. The temperature was kept as main factor and water purity as the second. The experiment was replicated four times and the data obtained were analyzed using two factorial completely randomized design. The results showed that both the factors had significant (p<0.05) effect on the germination, stem length, yield as well as proximate composition. A temperature of 30°C and water with high purity of 30 TDS resulted in high emergence (69%), stem length (3.14 cm) and yield (70.1 g) as compared to the other treatments. Minimum germination (2.1%), stem length (0.11 cm) and yield (12.11 g) were recorded in samples kept at low temperature of 10°C and water purity with 1000 TDS. The mungbean seeds showed a very low plasticity to water purity, and that they were very susceptible to water impurities. It is concluded that, to prepare sprouts from mungbeans, it is necessary to germinate mungbean seeds them in water having high purity and temperature of 30oC for maximum germination, stem length and yield

Synthesis, Characterization and Antimicrobial Activity of Bacillus subtilis-Derived Silver Nanoparticles Against Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria

Background: Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have received great attention in the biomedical field because of their intrinsic therapeutic properties. Nanoparticles synthesized from silver have been studied as antimicrobial, antiviral and anticancer agents and found particularly an attractive source for the development of a new and advance group of antimicrobial agents. Objectives: In the present study, silver nanoparticles were synthesized from non-pathogenic Bacillus subtilis strain to assess their antimicrobial activity. Methods: Different strains of Bacillus spp. were selected and screened against silver nitrate (AgNO3) toxicity. Finally, B. subtilis strain (FCBP-WB-0174) was selected based on its silver resistant nature, among other strains. Silver nanoparticles were synthesized and optimized from the supernatant of B. subtilis culture at 37°C by the reduction of silver ions using the various molar concentration of AgNO3. The synthesized AgNPs were characterized by UV-Vis spectrophotometry and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). These synthesized AgNPs were used for evaluating antimicrobial activity against four multidrug-resistant bacterial strains. Results: The silver ion reduction was found at a ratio of 1:1 from all the three molar concentrations (1, 2, and 3 mM) of AgNO3. The characterized nanoparticles were found to have a characteristic absorption peak at 426 nm, and the particles were found to have spherical shape under SEM with an average diameter of about 80 ± 0.18 nm, which was also reconfirmed using Zeta Sizer Nano. Prepared Silver nanoparticles have found potential antimicrobial activities against all tested pathogenic, including strains, e.g., Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Escherichia coli. Conclusions: Effective AgNP’s were produced from selected B. subtilis strain, and the strain itself was resistant to AgNO3. The current study evidenced that biologically synthesized silver nanoparticles from B. subtilis has promising antimicrobial activities against pathogenic and multidrug-resistant bacteri

Production of Remedial Proteins through Genetically Modified Bacteria

Recombinant DNA technology has created biological organisms with advanced genetic sequences and has been extensively used to express multiple genes for therapeutic purposes when expressed in a suitable host. Microbial systems such as prokaryotic bacteria has been successfully utilized as a heterologous systems showing high therapeutic potency for various human diseases. Bioengineered bacteria have been successfully utilized for producing therapeutic proteins, treating infectious diseases, and disease arise due to increasing resistance to antibiotics. Prominently E. colifound to be the most widely used expression system for recombinant therapeutic protein production i.e. hormones, enzymes and antibodies. Besides E. coli, non-pathogenic lactic acid bacteria has also been considered as an excellent candidate for live mucosal vaccine. Likewise, S. typhimuriumhas been deployed as attenuated type of vaccination as well as in treatment strategy of various cancers due to its ability of wide progression in tumors. The present article is a summarized view of the main achievements and current developments in the field of recombinant therapeutics using bacterial strains focusing on their usability in therapeutics and future potential. 

Defense strategies of cotton against whitefly transmitted CLCuV and Begomoviruses

Cotton leaf curl virus (CLCuV) is economically important monopartite Geminivirus which is transmitted by whitefly in persistent circulative manner. In Pakistan, CLCuV causes severe damage to Gossypium hirsutum whereas G. arboreum is resistant to this virus. A total of 86 articles were included in this study that were searched through web of knowledge, web of science and google scholar by using the keywords of cotton, CLCuV, waxes, Begomoviruses and transgenic techniques used against Begomoviruses in plants. Various transgenic strategies i.e., pathogen derived resistance (with and without protein expression) and non - pathogen derived resistance have been adopted to control this virus or its vector. Beside these, some natural defense mechanisms of plant also protect it against the vector. The cuticular waxes make the insects’ attachment difficult to plant surfaces and act as a physical barrier. The cuticular waxes in G. arboreum act as first line of defense against whiteflies and thus CLCuV. Some other defense strategies may involve hindering the insect movements or depriving it from food due to thick waxy layer. Biotechnological strategies against various Begomoviruses including CLCuV were found successful in some crops except cotton. Whereas, the natural defense strategies in G. arboreum i.e., long trichome or presence of inorganic salts with increased concentration of waxes, provide good defense strategy against whiteflies, CLCuV and other pathogens

Serum magnesium levels and acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a retrospective study

A decrease in serum Mg+ 2 is associated with airway hyper-reactivity and impaired pulmonary function. The purpose of this study was to determine if decreased serum Mg+ 2 levels in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are associated with acute exacerbations. In a retrospective study, the charted serum Mg+ 2 levels in 100 COPD patients were examined. These included 50 patients who presented with an acute exacerbation of COPD and 50 stable patients. Chart review was sequential within both groups. Serum Mg 2+ levels in the stable COPD patients averaged 0.91±0.10 mmol/L (mean±SD) with a 95% CI of 0.88–0.94 mmol/L. Patients undergoing an exacerbation had significantly lower serum Mg+ 2 levels (0.77±0.10 mmol/L; CI, 0.74–0.79; p< 0.0001). Logistic regression of the dichotomous outcomes as a function of serum Mg+ 2 concentration demonstrated a highly significant

Science Behind Cotton Transformation

The introduction of foreign genes into plant has made possible to bring out desired traits into crop of our own interest. With the advancement in cell biology, regeneration of plants from single cell and advent of different procedures for gene transformation to the plants have opened new avenues for the efficient and applicable implementation of biotechnology for the modifications of desired crop characteristics. Identifications and isolation of different genes for various traits from different organisms have made possible to get the crop plants with modified characters. Over time improvement has been made in transformation technology depending upon the crop of interest. The efficiency of plant transformation has been increased with advances in plant transformation vectors and methodologies, which resulted in the improvement of crops. A detailed discussion on advanced techniques for genetic modification of plants with their handy use and limitation has been focused in this chapter

Deep Learning Assisted Automated Assessment of Thalassaemia from Haemoglobin Electrophoresis Images

Haemoglobin (Hb) electrophoresis is a method of blood testing used to detect thalassaemia. However, the interpretation of the result of the electrophoresis test itself is a complex task. Expert haematologists, specifically in developing countries, are relatively few in number and are usually overburdened. To assist them with their workload, in this paper we present a novel method for the automated assessment of thalassaemia using Hb electrophoresis images. Moreover, in this study we compile a large Hb electrophoresis image dataset, consisting of 103 strips containing 524 electrophoresis images with a clear consensus on the quality of electrophoresis obtained from 824 subjects. The proposed methodology is split into two parts: (1) single-patient electrophoresis image segmentation by means of the lane extraction technique, and (2) binary classification (normal or abnormal) of the electrophoresis images using state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and using the concept of transfer learning. Image processing techniques including filtering and morphological operations are applied for object detection and lane extraction to automatically separate the lanes and classify them using CNN models. Seven different CNN models (ResNet18, ResNet50, ResNet101, InceptionV3, DenseNet201, SqueezeNet and MobileNetV2) were investigated in this study. InceptionV3 outperformed the other CNNs in detecting thalassaemia using Hb electrophoresis images. The accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and specificity in the detection of thalassaemia obtained with the InceptionV3 model were 95.8%, 95.84%, 95.8%, 95.8% and 95.8%, respectively. MobileNetV2 demonstrated an accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and specificity of 95.72%, 95.73%, 95.72%, 95.7% and 95.72% respectively. Its performance was comparable with the best performing model, InceptionV3. Since it is a very shallow network, MobileNetV2 also provides the least latency in processing a single-patient image and it can be suitably used for mobile applications. The proposed approach, which has shown very high classification accuracy, will assist in the rapid and robust detection of thalassaemia using Hb electrophoresis images. 2022 by the authors.A part of the research was funded by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan through its funded project of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, Intelligent Information Processing Lab, National Center of Artificial Intelligence.Scopu

Genomics of Salinity Tolerance in Plants

Plants are frequently exposed to wide range of harsh environmental factors, such as drought, salinity, cold, heat, and insect attack. Being sessile in nature, plants have developed different strategies to adapt and grow under rapidly changing environments. These strategies involve rearrangements at the molecular level starting from transcription, regulation of mRNA processing, translation, and protein modification or its turnover. Plants show stress-specific regulation of transcription that affects their transcriptome under stress conditions. The transcriptionally regulated genes have different roles under stress response. Generally, seedling and reproductive stages are more susceptible to stress. Thus, stress response studies during these growth stages reveal novel differentially regulated genes or proteins with important functions in plant stress adaptation. Exploiting the functional genomics and bioinformatics studies paved the way in understanding the relationship between genotype and phenotype of an organism suffering from environmental stress. Future research programs can be focused on the development of transgenic plants with enhanced stress tolerance in field conditions based upon the outcome of genomic approaches and knowing the mystery of nucleotides sequences hidden in cells