Muga (Antheraea assamensis) is an economically important silkmoth endemic to the states of Assam and Meghalaya in India and is the producer of the strongest known commercial silk. However, there is a scarcity of genomic and proteomic data for understanding the organism at a molecular level. Our present study is on decoding the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of A. assamensis using next generation sequencing technology and comparing it with other available lepidopteran mitogenomes. Mitogenome of A. assamensis is an AT rich circular molecule of 15,272 bp (A+T content ~80.2%). It contains 37 genes comprising of 13 protein coding genes (PCGs), 22 tRNA and 2 rRNA genes along with a 328 bp long control region. Its typical tRNAMet-tRNAIle-tRNAGln arrangement differed from ancestral insects (tRNAIle-tRNAGln-tRNAMet). Two PCGs cox1 and cox2 were found to have CGA and GTG as start codons, respectively as reported in some lepidopterans. Interestingly, nad4l gene showed higher transversion mutations at intra-species than inter-species level. All PCGs evolved under strong purifying selection with highest evolutionary rates observed for atp8 gene while lowest for cox1 gene. We observed the typical clover-leaf shaped secondary structures of tRNAs with a few exceptions in case of tRNASer1 and tRNATyr where stable DHU and TΨC loop were absent. A significant number of mismatches (35) were found to spread over 19 tRNA structures. The control region of mitogenome contained a six bp (CTTAGA/G) deletion atypical of other Antheraea species and lacked tandem repeats. Phylogenetic position of A. assamensis was consistent with the traditional taxonomic classification of Saturniidae. The complete annotated mitogenome is available in GenBank (Accession No. KU379695). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on complete mitogenome of A. assamensis.

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Curcumin is one of the most intensively studied diarylheptanoid, Curcuma longa being its principal producer. This apart, a class of promising curcumin analogs has been generated in laboratories, aptly named as Curcuminoids which are showing huge potential in the fields of medicine, food technology, etc. The lack of a universal source of data on curcumin as well as curcuminoids has been felt by the curcumin research community for long. Hence, in an attempt to address this stumbling block, we have developed Curcumin Resource Database (CRDB) that aims to perform as a gateway-cum-repository to access all relevant data and related information on curcumin and its analogs. Currently, this database encompasses 1186 curcumin analogs, 195 molecular targets, 9075 peer reviewed publications, 489 patents and 176 varieties of C. longa obtained by extensive data mining and careful curation from numerous sources. Each data entry is identified by a unique CRDB ID (identifier). Furnished with a user-friendly web interface and in-built search engine, CRDB provides well-curated and cross-referenced information that are hyperlinked with external sources. CRDB is expected to be highly useful to the researchers working on structure as well as ligand-based molecular design of curcumin analogs.Database URL: http://www.crdb.in

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