a-strategy-to-validate-role-callose-mediated-plasmodesmal-gating

A Strategy to Validate the Role of Callose-mediated Plasmodesmal Gating in the Tropic Response

The plant hormone auxin plays an important role in many growth and developmental processes, including tropic responses to light and gravity. The ...

Gyeongsang National University

Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam-"A Man Beyond Science".

Odours are highly complex, relying on hundreds of receptors, and people are known to disagree in their linguistic descriptions of smells. It is partly due to these facts that, it is very hard to map the domain of odour molecules or their structure to that of perceptual representations, a problem that has been referred to as the Structure-Odour-Relationship. We collected a number of diverse open domain databases of odour molecules having unorganised perceptual descriptors, and developed a graphical method to find the similarity between perceptual descriptors; which is intuitive and can be used to identify perceptual classes. We then separately projected the physico-chemical and perceptual features of these molecules in a non-linear dimension and clustered the similar molecules. We found a significant overlap between the spatial positioning of the clustered molecules in the physico-chemical and perceptual spaces. We also developed a statistical method of predicting the perceptual qualities of a novel molecule using its physico-chemical properties with high receiver operating characteristics(ROC).

Understanding the Odour Spaces: A Step towards Solving Olfactory Stimulus-Percept Problem.

Choriocarcinoma is a rare neoplasm and a malignant form of gestational trophoblastic disease. Choriocarcinoma is frequently preceded by a complete mole, ectopic pregnancy, nonmolar intrauterine abortion, and uncommonly by a partial mole. It is treated medically with chemotherapeutic drugs usually. However, we managed to save a life with appropriate and timely surgical intervention in a case of choriocarcinoma who presented with uterine rupture, haemoperitoneum, anaemia and hypovolemic shock. The patient underwent exploratory laparotomy and hysterectomy followed by systemic chemotherapy.

Choriocarcinoma with Uterine Rupture and Shock: A Rare Case Report.

Thymoma is the most common mediastinal tumor. They have varied presentation ranging from asymptomatic incidental mediastinal masses to locally extensive tumor with compressive symptoms and distant metastases. They have frequent association with various paraneoplastic syndromes (PNS). The most common PNS associated with thymoma is myasthenia gravis (MG). Patients of thymoma with MG have a favourable outcome due to early disclosure of the disease. Histologically they are classified into five subtypes and Masaoka-Koga staging system is used for staging. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy play an important role along with anti-myasthenia drugs. This review would like to highlight the association of thymoma with MG and associated clinical and therapeutic issues.

Myasthenia gravis and thymic neoplasms: A brief review.

Intracranial meningiomas are the second most common tumor of the CNS. The high-grade tumors are atypical and malignant meningioma comprising 5-7% and 1-3% of all meningiomas. The high-grade meningioma have an aggressive histopathological and clinical behavior.

Survival and failure patterns in atypical and anaplastic meningiomas: A single-center experience of surgery and postoperative radiotherapy.

Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) in adults is a rare malignancy. The objective of our study was to determine presentation, treatment, patterns of failure, and outcome in this disease.

Adult rhabdomyosarcoma: Clinical presentation, treatment, and outcome.

The genome of Leishmania donovani, the causative agent of visceral leishmaniasis, codes for approximately 65% of both conserved and non-conserved hypothetical proteins. Studies on 'conserved hypothetical' proteins are expected to reveal not only new and crucial aspects of Leishmania biochemistry, but it could also lead to discovery of novel drug candidates. Conserved hypothetical protein, LdBPK_070020, is a 31.14 kDa protein, encoded by an 810 bp gene. BLAST analysis of LdBPK_070020, performed against NCBI non-redundant database, showed 80-99% similarity with conserved hypothetical proteins of Leishmania belonging to other species. Using homologues recombination method, we have performed gene knockout of LdBPK_070020 and effects of the same were investigated on the parasite. The gene knocked out strain shows significant retardation in growth with respect to wild type. Detailed biochemical studies indicated towards important role of LdBPK_070020 in the parasite survival and growth.

Understanding the importance of conservative hypothetical protein LdBPK_070020 in Leishmania donovani and its role in subsistence of the parasite.

Numerous therapeutic peptides do not enter the clinical trials just because of their high hemolytic activity. Recently, we developed a database, Hemolytik, for maintaining experimentally validated hemolytic and non-hemolytic peptides. The present study describes a web server and mobile app developed for predicting, and screening of peptides having hemolytic potency. Firstly, we generated a dataset HemoPI-1 that contains 552 hemolytic peptides extracted from Hemolytik database and 552 random non-hemolytic peptides (from Swiss-Prot). The sequence analysis of these peptides revealed that certain residues (e.g., L, K, F, W) and motifs (e.g., "FKK", "LKL", "KKLL", "KWK", "VLK", "CYCR", "CRR", "RFC", "RRR", "LKKL") are more abundant in hemolytic peptides. Therefore, we developed models for discriminating hemolytic and non-hemolytic peptides using various machine learning techniques and achieved more than 95% accuracy. We also developed models for discriminating peptides having high and low hemolytic potential on different datasets called HemoPI-2 and HemoPI-3. In order to serve the scientific community, we developed a web server, mobile app and JAVA-based standalone software (http://crdd.osdd.net/raghava/hemopi/).

A Web Server and Mobile App for Computing Hemolytic Potency of Peptides.

Intubation by using exaggerated curve: A modification of technique for underprivileged area.

Heat stress adversely affects the growth and yield of faba bean crop. Accumulation of ClpB/Hsp100 class of proteins is a critical parameter in induction of acquired heat stress tolerance in plants. Heat-induced expression of ClpB/Hsp100 genes has been noted in diverse plant species. Using primers complementary to soybean ClpB/Hsp100 gene, we analyzed the transcript expression profile of faba bean ClpB/Hsp100 gene in leaves of seedlings and flowering plants and in pollen grains. ClpB/Hsp100 protein accumulation profile was analyzed in leaves of faba bean seedlings using Arabidopsis thaliana cytoplasmic Hsp101 antibodies. The transcript and protein levels of faba bean ClpB/Hsp100 were significantly induced in response to heat stress.

Expression analysis of ClpB/Hsp100 gene in faba bean (Vicia faba L.) plants in response to heat stress.

Drug information can be obtained from various sources such as National Formularies, drug package inserts (PI), other sources such as Monthly Index of Medical Specialities (MIMS), Current Index of Medical Specialities, and the information available with the regulators. Any variation in the information available in different sources can promote irrational drug use. In this study, we assessed this variation in a sample of commonly used drugs.

Difference in described indications of medicines among drug information sources in India: An issue urgently to be addressed.

Non-Hodgkins lymphoma of the Natural Killer (NK) cell type is rare. World Health Organisation recognises 3 NK-cell phenotypic entities; extranodal NK/T cell lymphoma, nasal type (ENK/TL); aggressive NK cell leukaemia (ANKL); and chronic lymphoproliferative disorders of NK cells (CLPD-NK) which is classified as a provisional entity. Though specific clinical, morphological and immunophenotypic criteria have been laid down to diagnose these conditions there may however, be considerable variations in the clinical presentation making diagnosis difficult. We present a case with contrasting clinical and haematopathological findings posing difficulty in its diagnosis and classification, and despite the aggressive presentation showing favourable response to treatment.

Natural Killer Cell Lymphoma: A Case with Classification Dilemma.

Previous characterization of hemophores from Serratia marcescens (HasAs), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (HasAp) and Yersinia pestis (HasAyp) showed that hemin binds between two loops, where it is axially coordinated by H32 and Y75. The Y75 loop is structurally conserved in all three hemophores and harbors conserved ligand Y75. The other loop contains H32 in HasAs and HasAp, but a noncoordinating Q32 in HasAyp. The H32 loop in apo-HasAs and apo-HasAp is in an open conformation, which places H32 about 30 Å from the hemin-binding site. Hence, hemin binding onto the Y75 loop of HasAs or HasAp triggers a large relocation of the H32 loop from an open- to a closed-loop conformation and enables coordination of the hemin-iron by H32. In comparison, the Q32 loop in apo-HasAyp is in the closed conformation and hemin binding occurs with minimal reorganization and without coordinative interactions with the Q32 loop. Studies in crystallo and in solution have established that the open H32 loop in apo-HasAp and apo-HasAs is well structured and minimally affected by conformational dynamics. In this study we address the intriguing issue of the stability of the H32 loop in apo-HasAp and how hemin binding triggers its relocation. We address this question with a combination of NMR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, and molecular dynamics simulations and find that R33 is critical to the stability of the open H32 loop. Replacing R33 with A causes the H32 loop in R33A apo-HasAp to adopt a conformation similar to that of holo-HasAp. Finally, stopped-flow absorption and resonance Raman analyses of hemin binding to apo-R33A HasAp indicates that the closed H32 loop slows down the insertion of the heme inside the binding pocket, presumably as it obstructs access to the hydrophobic platform on the Y75 loop, but accelerate the completion of the heme iron coordination.

Ritesh Kumar

Division of Applied Life Science (BK21 plus program),
Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Research Center,
Division of Applied Life Science (BK21 plus program), Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Research Center

Gyeongsang National University

A Strategy to Validate the Role of Callose-mediated Plasmodesmal Gating in the Tropic Response