ABSTRACT
Background: The three most common fatal cancers were oral, stomach, lung in men. Tobacco related cancers represented 42% in male and 18.3% in female cancer deaths. Poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) is the carcinogen present in tobacco leads to squamous cell carcinoma of oral cavity. Context and purpose of the study: To study the genotoxicity of tobacco and alcohol on the buccal mucosa of alchoholics, smokers and betel nut chewers which is indicated by increased Micro nuclei. 20 persons having the habit of consuming alcohol and smoking and betel nut chewing were compared with 20 controls. After getting the informed consent the material was collected and stained for MN Assay. Results: MN frequency in alcoholic, smokers, betel nut chewers were found to be significant with the ‘P’ value of <0.05 in our study. Conclusion: The present study has revealed that there is a correlation of significant increased frequency of micro nucleus present in users of (1) alcohol and smoking in combination (2) betel nut chewers as compared to normal counterparts, indicating strong cytogenetic damage which may lead to cancerous proliferation. Tobacco can be considered as a leading carcinogenic agent for causing DNA damage which is indicated by increased micro nucleus. Implication: The present micro nuclear study shows a feasible and economical method which could be used as a screening test in population having the habit of alcohol and smoking or betel nut chewing for identifying the effects of genomic instabilities and to introduce timely interventional strategy in order to treat and control the epidemic.
ABSTRACT
Mosquitocidal bacteria are environmentally friendly alternatives to chemical insecticides for controlling mosquitoes and therefore, there have been tremendous world-wide efforts to identify novel mosquitocidal bacteria from natural environment. In the present study, excreta from arid-birds were analyzed for identifying mosquitocidal bacteria. The selection of sample for bacterial screening is significant, because, arid-birds are the unique living species and gathering the foods from variety of sources from environment. Out of 1000 samples examined, twelve bacterial strains were identified as mosquitocidal and the 16S rRNA gene sequence alignment depicted that these isolates belonged to Bacillus species (Bacillus thuringiensis, B.sphaericus and B.cereus). Toxicity assay against mosquito vectors have shown that these isolates are potential. The B. sphaericus VCRC-B547 (NCBI: JN377789) has shown a higher toxicity against Cx. quinquefasciatus, An. stephensi, and Aed. aegypti. Result from SDS-PAGE has shown that there was considerable difference in the protein profiles among the new bacterial isolates. Phylogenetic tree with branch length 0.05 revealed three distinct groups with homology among the closely related Bacillus strains. This study therefore throws considerable interest on the diversity of microbial organisms from arid birds and its application in mosquito control.