Life Sciences

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Background: The adolescent girls are more vulnerable, particularly in developing countries including India, due to various adverse socio-cultural and economic reasons. Majority of the health problems affecting adolescent girls are preventable by promotion of hygienic practices through proper health education by the teachers. Aim: This study was designed to examine the various factors influencing the prevalence of morbidity among school-going adolescent girls of Lucknow district in north India. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in urban and rural schools of Lucknow district from 2008 to 2009. Multistage random sampling was used to select the requisite number of girls. A total of 847 adolescent girls between 10 and 19 years of age were interviewed, and information regarding their socio-demographic characteristics was collected and clinical examination was carried out. Statistical analyses were done using percentage and Chi-square test. Results: Of 847 adolescent girls, around 64.8% were found to be sick at the time of the study. Significant association of morbidity was observed with caste, birth order, type of family, socioeconomic status (SES), living status with parents/guardian, and general personal hygiene (P<0.05). Conclusion: This study reveals a high prevalence of morbidity. A strong need exists for planning and programming intervention activities for health needs in the area.

World University root node

(SoNS) School of Natural Sciences

Fulltext

North American Journal of Medical Sciences

Social determinants and its influence on the prevalence of morbidity among adolescent girls

Considerable evidence suggests that brain damage can lead to impairments in locomotive activity in human beings. However, no study has thoroughly investigated the locomotion and morphological changes in animals after IntelliCage Exposure (IE). Therefore, to elucidate the locomotive activity and morphological changes in striatum of mice models of fluid percussion injury (FPI), we designed a novel strategy and utilised an advanced neurobehavioral monitoring device known as the IE system. We observed locomotive functioning, from the induction of injury until complete recovery. To achieve the objectives, mice were divided into four groups, the (i) sham group (. n=. 8), (ii) FPI group (. n=. 8), and not subjected to acclimatisation in the IE, (iii) sham group (. n=. 11) and (iv) FPI group (. n=. 11), and subjected to acclimatisation in the IE. Locomotive activity was monitored for each group for 5. days. Results suggested that the neuronal damage associated with locomotive impairment could occur in the early hours (3-6. h) post-FPI. The process of recovery started significantly at 24. h and continued. Results showed a complete restoration in locomotive activity by the FPI mice at 72. h post-trauma. Morphological results suggested that FPI mice with IE showed less dead cells as compared to FPI mice without IE. Our data also suggested a new dimension for the factors influencing FPI recovery. We hypothesise that IE to FPI animals may provide the necessary enriched environment, induce motivated voluntary physical exercises, and enhance social interactions to accelerate striatum-derived neurogenesis. These factors could be beneficial in TBI-related therapeutic strategies. © 2012 .

Basal Ganglia

IntelliCage provides voluntary exercise and an enriched environment, improving locomotive activity in mice following fluid percussion injury

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important crop legume plant with high nutritional value. The transcriptomes of desi and wild chickpea have already been sequenced. In this study, we sequenced the transcriptome of kabuli chickpea, C. arietinum (genotype ICCV2), having higher commercial value, using GS-FLX Roche 454 and Illumina technologies. The assemblies of both Roche 454 and Illumina datasets were optimized using various assembly programs and parameters. The final optimized hybrid assembly generated 43,389 transcripts with an average length of 1065 bp and N50 length of 1653 bp representing 46.2 Mb of kabuli chickpea transcriptome. We identified a total of 5409 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in these transcript sequences. Among these, at least 130 and 493 SSRs were polymorphic with desi (ICC4958) and wild (PI489777) chickpea, respectively. In addition, a total of 1986 and 37,954 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were predicted in kabuli/desi and kabuli/wild genotypes, respectively. The SNP frequency was 0.043 SNP per kb for kabuli/desi and 0.821 SNP per kb for kabuli/wild, reflecting very low genetic diversity in chickpea. Further, SSRs and SNPs present in tissue-specific and transcription factor encoding transcripts have been identified. The experimental validation of a selected set of polymorphic SSRs and SNPs exhibited high intra-specific polymorphism potential between desi and kabuli chickpea, suggesting their utility in large-scale genotyping applications. The kabuli chickpea gene index assembled, and SSRs and SNPs identified in this study will serve as useful genomic resource for genetic improvement of chickpea. © 2012 Agarwal et al.

PLoS ONE

Comparative Analysis of Kabuli Chickpea Transcriptome with Desi and Wild Chickpea Provides a Rich Resource for Development of Functional Markers

The transcriptome of cultivated chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), an important crop legume, has recently been sequenced. Here, we report sequencing of the transcriptome of wild chickpea, C. reticulatum (PI489777), the progenitor of cultivated chickpea, by GS-FLX 454 technology. The optimized assembly of C. reticulatum transcriptome generated 37265 transcripts in total with an average length of 946bp. A total of 4072 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) could be identified in these transcript sequences, of which at least 561 SSRs were polymorphic between C. arietinum and C. reticulatum. In addition, a total of 36446 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified after optimization of probability score, quality score, read depth and consensus base ratio. Several of these SSRs and SNPs could be associated with tissue-specific and transcription factor encoding transcripts. A high proportion (92-94%) of polymorphic SSRs and SNPs identified between the two chickpea species were validated successfully. Further, the estimation of synonymous substitution rates of orthologous transcript pairs suggested that the speciation event for divergence of C. arietinum and C. reticulatum may have happened approximately 0.53million years ago. The results of our study provide a rich resource for exploiting genetic variations in chickpea for breeding programmes. © 2012 The Authors. Plant Biotechnology Journal © 2012 Society for Experimental Biology, Association of Applied Biologists and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Plant Biotechnology Journal

Transcriptome sequencing of wild chickpea as a rich resource for marker development

The synthesis of the peptidoglycan cell wall is carefully regulated in time and space. In nature, this essential process occurs in cells that live in fluctuating environments. Here we show that the spatial distributions of specific cell wall proteins in Caulobacter crescentus are sensitive to small external osmotic upshifts. The penicillin-binding protein PBP2, which is commonly branded as an essential cell elongation-specific transpeptidase, switches its localization from a dispersed, patchy pattern to an accumulation at the FtsZ ring location in response to osmotic upshifts as low as 40 mosmol/kg. This osmolality-dependent relocation to the division apparatus is initiated within less than a minute, while restoration to the patchy localization pattern is dependent on cell growth and takes 1 to 2 generations. Cell wall morphogenetic protein RodA and penicillin-binding protein PBP1a also change their spatial distribution by accumulating at the division site in response to external osmotic upshifts. Consistent with its ecological distribution, C. crescentus displays a narrow range of osmotolerance, with an upper limit of 225 mosmol/kg in minimal medium. Collectively, our findings reveal an unsuspected level of environmental regulation of cell wall protein behavior that is likely linked to an ecological adaptation. © 2012, American Society for Microbiology.

Journal of Bacteriology

Osmolality-dependent relocation of penicillin-binding protein PBP2 to the division site in Caulobacter crescentus

Sixty five patients (20 children and 45 adults of both sexes) having hepatomegaly were subjected to serum copper, hepatic copper and hepatic cuproprotein analysis from October 1982 through September 1983. Higher levels of serum copper were encountered in 17/20 children suffering from Indian Childhood Cirrhosis (ICC), values ranging from 151 ug/dl to 350 ug/dl. Hypercupremia was also detected in reactive hepatitis 5/17, portal cirrhosis 2/9, chronic active liver disease (CALD) 3/4, malignancies in liver 3/5 and in the single case of secondary biliary cirrhosis, serum copper was normal in cases of steatosis of liver, Dubin-Johnson Syndrome and congenital hepatic fibrosis. Hepatic copper was detected only in cases of ICC (17/20). Hepatic cuproproteins were also detected in all these cases as intracytoplasmic dark drown granules. In other chronic liver diseases studied, both hepatic copper and cuproproteins were negative. It is proposed that deranged copper metabolism could have a role in the pathogenesis of ICC.

International Journal of Pharma and Bio Sciences

Serum copper and hepatic copper in chronic liver diseases with particular reference to indian childhood cirrhosis

Re: Social determinants and its influence on the prevalence of morbidity among adolescent girls

Many proteins refold in vitro through kinetic folding intermediates that are believed to be by-products of native-state centric evolution. These intermediates are postulated to play only minor roles, if any, in vivo because they lack any information related to translation-associated vectorial folding. We demonstrate that refolding intermediate of a test protein, generated in vitro, is able to find its cognate chaperone, from the whole complement of Escherichia coli soluble chaperones. Cognate chaperone-binding uniquely alters the conformation of non-native substrate. Importantly, precise chaperone targeting of substrates are maintained as long as physiological molar ratios of chaperones remain unaltered. Using a library of different chaperone substrates, we demonstrate that kinetically trapped refolding intermediates contain sufficient structural features for precise targeting to cognate chaperones. We posit that evolution favors sequences that, in addition to coding for a functional native state, encode folding intermediates with higher affinity for cognate chaperones than noncognate ones. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Structure

Information encoded in Non-native states drives substrate-chaperone pairing

Hormones exert pleiotropic effects on plant growth and development throughout the life cycle. Many of these effects are mediated at molecular level via altering gene expression. In this study, we investigated the exogenous effect of plant hormones, including auxin, cytokinin, abscisic acid, ethylene, salicylic acid and jasmonic acid, on the transcription of rice genes at whole genome level using microarray. Our analysis identified a total of 4171 genes involved in several biological processes, whose expression was altered significantly in the presence of different hormones. Further, 28% of these genes exhibited overlapping transcriptional responses in the presence of any two hormones, indicating crosstalk among plant hormones. In addition, we identified genes showing only a particular hormone-specific response, which can be used as hormone-specific markers. The results of this study will facilitate further studies in hormone biology in rice. © 2012 Landes Bioscience.

Plant Signaling and Behavior

Microarray analysis reveals overlapping and specific transcriptional responses to different plant hormones in rice

Plasmodium falciparum origin recognition complex 1 (ORC1) protein has been implicated in DNA replication and silencing var gene family. However, the mechanism and the domain structure of ORC1 related to the regulation of var gene family are unknown. Here we show that the unique N-terminus of PfORC1 (PfORC1N1-238) is targeted to the nuclear periphery in vivo and this region binds to the telomeric DNA in vitro due to the presence of a leucine heptad repeats. Like PfORC1N1-238, endogenous full length ORC1, was found to be associated with sub telomeric repeat regions and promoters of various var genes. Additionally, binding and propagation of ORC1 to telomeric and subtelomeric regions was severely compromised in PfSir2 deficient parasites suggesting the dependence of endogenous ORC1 on Sir2 for var gene regulation. This feature is not previously described for Plasmodium ORC1 and contrary to yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae where ORC function as a landing pad for Sir proteins. Interestingly, the overexpression of ORC1N1-238compromises the binding of Sir2 at the subtelomeric loci and var gene promoters consistent with de-repression of some var genes. These results establish role of the N-terminus of PfORC1 in heterochromatin formation and regulation of var gene expression in co-ordination with Sir2 in P. falciparum. © The Author(s) 2012. Published by Oxford University Press.