Withania somnifera (L.) Dunal is an important medicinal plant with many pharmaceutical and therapeutic uses ranging from immunomodulation to anticancer property. Field cultivation of W. somnifera is time consuming and it not able to meet current global demands. For commercial production of withanolides, field grown plant materials have generally been used but the quality and uniformity in the levels of active constituents are highly affected by genotype and environmental conditions. In vitro culture methods are the best alternative and have possible ways to enhance commercial production of withanolides. In this review, we summarize our recent findings on characterization and screening of wild accessions of W. somnifera collected from Tamil Nadu state. Further, an improved Agrobacterium rhizogenes mediated hairy root culture system was developed and this system providing an efficient tool attaining better transformation efficiency and useful for commercial in vitro production of withanolides.

Heavy metal analysis is the most promising tool to eliminate the unwanted pollution from the atmosphere. Particularly in seawater there are number of heavy metals are present. Assessment of this analysis will be useful to detect the unwanted heavy metals and it is the reason to find the new removal techniques.

INTRODUCTION Congenital cholesteatoma is a rare entity, arising from aberrant epithelial remnants left at the time of closure of the neural groove between the third and fifth week of fetal life with incidence ranging from 4 to 24%. Congenital membranous atresia is more common on right side and unilateral presentation is a rarity in females which is seen in our case. Here we report a rare case of 44 year old female with bilateral hard of hearing which is more on right side with ear discharge and was diagnosed by CT scan to have congenital unilateral membranous atresia with rare finding of ossicular malrotation associated with congenital cholesteatoma which are extremely rare combination of findings in a single patient. Knowing such rarity may help in appropriate surgical approach when confronted with such cases in clinical practice.