Previous decades have witnessed a lot of challenges that have provoked a dire need of ensuring global food security. The process of augmenting food production has made the agricultural ecosystems to face a lot of challenges like the persistence of residual particles of different pesticides, accretion of heavy metals, and contamination with toxic elemental particles which have negatively influenced the agricultural environment. The entry of such toxic elements into the human body via agricultural products engenders numerous health effects such as nerve and bone marrow disorders, metabolic disorders, infertility, disruption of biological functions at the cellular level, and respiratory and immunological diseases. The exigency for monitoring the agroecosystems can be appreciated by contemplating the reported 220,000 annual deaths due to toxic effects of residual pesticidal particles. The present practices employed for monitoring agroecosystems rely on techniques like gas chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, mass spectroscopy, etc. which have multiple constraints, being expensive, tedious with cumbersome protocol, demanding sophisticated appliances along with skilled personnel. The past couple of decades have witnessed a great expansion of the science of nanotechnology and this development has largely facilitated the development of modest, quick, and economically viable bio and nanosensors for detecting different entities contaminating the natural agroecosystems with an advantage of being innocuous to human health. The growth of nanotechnology has offered rapid development of bio and nanosensors for the detection of several composites which range from several metal ions, proteins, pesticides, to the detection of complete microorganisms. Therefore, the present review focuses on different bio and nanosensors employed for monitoring agricultural ecosystems and also trying to highlight the factor affecting their implementation from proof-of-concept to the commercialization stage.
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely destructed human life worldwide, with no suitable treatment until now. SARS-CoV-2 virus is unprecedented, resistance against number of therapeutics and spreading rapidly with high mortality, which warrants the need to discover new effective drugs to combat this situation. This current study is undertaken to explore the antiviral potential of marine algal compounds to inhibit the viral entry and its multiplication using computational analysis. Among the proven drug discovery targets of SARS-CoV-2, spike glycoprotein and 3-chymotrypsin-like protease are responsible for the virus attachment and viral genome replication in the host cell. In this study, the above-mentioned drug targets were docked with marine algal compounds (sulfated polysaccharides, polysaccharide derivatives and polyphenols) using molecular docking tools (AutoDockTools). The obtained results indicate that κ-carrageenan, laminarin, eckol, trifucol and β-D-galactose are the top-ranking compounds showing better docking scores with SARS-CoV-2 targets, than the current experimental COVID-19 antiviral drugs like dexamethasone, remdesivir, favipiravir and MIV-150. Further, molecular dynamic simulation, ADMET and density functional theory calculations were evaluated to substantiate the findings. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on in silico analysis of aforesaid algal metabolites against SARS-CoV-2 targets. This study concludes that these metabolites can be curative for COVID-19 in the hour of need after further validations in in vitro and in vivo testings. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma
Bengal, India. One is Ramsagar Zone, which is famous for the fish culture and here the ponds are well maintained as well as the physico-chemical factors; the second one is Bankura zone, where some non-manicured ponds are selected and no special care was taken there. Thus, we measured out the relationship between the biological factors and also the environmental effects on those factors, specially the zooplanktons (evidently by comparison) of both the zonal water bodies. The physico-chemical parameters studied were the atmospheric temperature, water temperature, pH, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen, free carbon dioxide, bi-carbonate, organic carbon of soil, organic matter, primary productivity, phosphate-P, ammonium-N, nitrite-N, total hardness, chloride ion, electrical conductivity and the zooplankton as biological parameter. Materials and Methods:-Sampling program and procedure:-The total study was carried out consecutively for six months from September, 2015 to February, 2016 at twelve different perennial ponds located at two different zone of Bankura district (from Figure 3-14). The main goal of present study is to investigate the different physico-chemical characteristics; how effectively leads to change the biological characteristics specially zooplankton of this two zonal ponds. The water samples were collected from these twelve ponds. From Figure 2 (collected from satellite map) it is quite clear that the ponds of Ramsagar zone are closely distributed in surrounding Fishery firm and those ponds are used for fish culture. Thus the ponds are manicured to maintain a standardized comfortable environment for fish culture by local farmers. The first zone of our study is the Ramsagar zone, about 30 Km. away from Bankura town. This zone is very much popular for fishery and the ponds are well maintained; bathing and washing purposes are limited in those ponds. Pond R-1 (Hatibari 1) is large and situated far from locality beside a poultry farm house and the color of water is greenish. Pond R-2 (Hatibari 2) is just beside the R-1, same size to R-1, well manicured and water color is greenish. Pond R-3 (Sima bandh) is also well maintained, no weeds, regularly manicured, water color not so greenish. All three ponds are used for fish culture strictly and maintained by fish farmers. Pond R-4 (Hatibari 3) is not so large; it is used for regular purpose and seasonal fish culture. Pond R-5 (Hadgora pukur) is large, water color is greenish-red, well maintained and situated in the locality. Pond R-6 (Rakshit Pukur) is also large, water color greenish and situated in the locality. Both the ponds are used for local activity and some extend of seasonal fish culture. Beside the first zone, the second zone that is situated in Bankura town and the studied ponds are distributed throughout the southeastern part of Bankura town. Here the six sites (S-1, S-2, S-3, S-4, S-5 and S-6) of water collection were divided into three parts along with two nearer pond sites. S-1 and S-2 are the two ponds of Police line area, Bankura. The S-1 is within...
Background G-quadruplexes regulate gene expression, recombination, packaging and latency in herpesviruses. Herpesvirus-encoded miRNAs have been linked to important biological functions. The presence and the biological role of G-quadruplexes have not been studied in the regulatory regions of virus miRNA. We hypothesized that herpesvirus-encoded miRNAs are regulated by G-quadruplexes in their promoters. Results We analyzed the 1 kb regulatory regions of all herpesvirus-encoded miRNAs for the presence of putative quadruplex-forming sequences (PQS). Over two-third (67%) of the regulatory regions of herpesvirus miRNAs had atleast 1 PQS. The 200 bp region of the promoter proximal to herpesvirus miRNA is particularly enriched for PQS. We chose to study the G-quadruplex motifs in the promoters of miR-K12 cluster in Kaposi's sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV miR-K12–1-9,11) and the miR-US33 encoded by Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV miR-US33). Biophysical characterization indicates that the G-quadruplex motifs in the promoters of the KSHV miR-K12 cluster and the HCMV miR-US33 form stable intramolecular G-quadruplexes in vitro. Mutations disrupting the G-quadruplex motif in the promoter of the KSHV miR-K12 cluster significantly inhibits promoter activity, while those disrupting the motif in the promoter of HCMV miR-US33 significantly enhance the promoter activity as compared to that of the respective wild-type promoter. Similarly, the addition of G-quadruplex binding ligands resulted in the modulation of promoter activity of the wild-type promoters (with intact G-quadruplex) but not the mutant promoters (containing quadruplex-disrupting mutations). Conclusion Our findings highlight previously unknown mechanisms of regulation of virus-encoded miRNA and also shed light on new roles for G-quadruplexes in herpesvirus biology.
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