Salivary Amylase and Mucin in Chronic Periodontitis: Pre- /Posttherapy.

AIM: The study aims to investigate the potential of salivary amylase as a reliable biochemical marker for assessing periodontal disease progression, establishing a potential correlation between salivary amylase levels and periodontal disease severity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included 40 participants, aged 25-65, equally divided into a control and study group of 20 individuals each. Clinical parameters, such as oral hygiene index, gingival index, probing depth, and clinical attachment level were recorded. Saliva samples were collected and analyzed for amylase and mucin levels using a semi-auto analyzer and spectrophotometer, respectively. These clinical parameters and salivary biomarkers were evaluated before and after 45 days of phase I periodontal therapy. Statistical analysis, including independent samples t-test, paired samples t-test, and correlation analysis were performed to assess the treatment effectiveness and explore associations between clinical parameters and salivary biomarkers. RESULTS: The study group with chronic generalized periodontitis showed significantly higher salivary amylase (27022.5 ± 8598.9) and mucin levels (3258 ± 724.2) and worse clinical parameters than the control group at baseline. However, after phase I periodontal therapy, the study group exhibited reduced salivary biomarkers amylase (17924.0 ± 4703.6) and mucin (1828.45 ± 314.07) and improved clinical parameters, indicating the effectiveness of the treatment in enhancing periodontal health compared with the control group. Positive correlations were found between clinical parameters and salivary amylase/mucin levels both before and after therapy (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Salivary amylase and mucin levels hold promise as valuable biomarkers for diagnosing active periodontal disease and evaluating treatment outcomes after phase I therapy. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Salivary biomarker comparison offers a noninvasive diagnostic tool for periodontal disease, improving early detection and personalized treatment planning. Further research is required to validate its clinical value fully.

Predicting performance of in-situ microbial enhanced oil recovery process and screening of suitable microbe-nutrient combination from limited experimental data using physics informed machine learning approach.

Screening of suitable microbe-nutrient combination and prediction of oil recovery at the initial stage is essential for the success of Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) technique. However, experimental and physics-based modelling approaches are expensive and time-consuming. In this study, Physics Informed Machine Learning (PIML) framework was developed to screen and predict oil recovery at a relatively lesser time and cost with limited experimental data. The screening was done by quantifying the influence of parameters on oil recovery from correlation and feature importance studies. Results revealed that microbial kinetic, operational and reservoir parameters influenced the oil recovery by 50%, 32.6% and 17.4%, respectively. Higher oil recovery is attained by selecting a microbe-nutrient combination having a higher ratio of value between biosurfactant yield and microbial yield parameters, as they combinedly influence the oil recovery by 27%. Neural Network is the best ML model for MEOR application to predict oil recovery (R2≈0.99).

Actinobacterial community structure in the Polar Frontal waters of the Southern Ocean of the Antarctica using Geographic Information System (GIS): A novel approach to study Ocean Microbiome.

Integration of microbiological data and geographical locations is necessary to understand the spatiotemporalpatterns of themicrobial diversity of an ecosystem. The Geographic Information System (GIS) to map and cataloguethe data ontheactinobacterial diversity of the Southern Ocean waterswas completed through sampling and analysis. Water samples collectedat two sampling stations viz.Polar Front 1(Station 1) andPolar Front 2(Station2)during7thIndian Scientific Expedition to the Indian Ocean Sector of the Southern Ocean (SOE-2012-13)were used for analysis. At the outset, two different genera of Actinobacteria were recorded at both sampling stations.Streptomyces was the dominantedwiththehigh score (> 60%), followed by Nocardiopsis (< 30%)at both the sampling stations-Polar Front 1 and Polar Front 2-along withother invasive genera such as Agrococcus, Arthrobacter, Cryobacterium, Curtobacterium,Microbacterium, Marisediminicola, Rhodococcus and Kocuria. This data will help to discriminate the diversity and distribution pattern of the Actinobacteria in the Polar Frontal Region of the Southern Ocean waters.Itis a novel approachusefulfor geospatial cataloguing of microbial diversityfromextreme nichesand in various environmental gradations.Furthermore,this research work will act as the milestone for bioprospecting of microbial communities and their products having potential applications in healthcare, agriculture and beneficial to mankind. Hence, this research work would have significance in creating a database on microbial communities of the Antarctic ecosystem.

Characterization of a virulent ranavirus isolated from marine ornamental fish in India.

A viral agent implicated in the mortality of marine ornamental "Similar Damselfish" (Pomacentrus similis Allen, 1991) was isolated and characterized. The virus grew well in marine and freshwater fish cell lines from seabass and snakehead. The virus was sensitive to chloroform, acidic pH (3.0) and heat treatment at 56 °C. Biochemical characterisation indicated that the virus had double stranded DNA genome. Transmission electron microscopic analysis of ultrathin sections of infected cell pellets showed iridovirus-like icosahedral virus particles of 120-130 nm. Purified virus had six structural protein bands that ranged from of 44 to 132 kDa. PCR analysis confirmed the presence of viral DNA in infected cell cultures and sequence analysis of the major capsid protein gene showed an identity of 99.82% to that of largemouth bass virus. Serum neutralization studies involving the viral agent and koi ranavirus (KIRV) indicated partial homogeneity between the two isolates. Experimental infection of seabass (Lates calcarifer) and similar damselfish (P. similis) fingerlings with the similar damselfish virus showed cumulative mortalities of 68.75 and 93.33%. The biophysical and biochemical properties of the viral agent isolated, serological characteristics, size of major capsid proteins and the sequence similarity of the MCP gene proved that the virus belongs to the genus Ranavirus of the family Iridoviridae. Ability of the virus to grow in marine and freshwater fish cell lines and its pathogenicity to one of the cultivable marine fish shows the wide host range of the virus. This is the first report of ranavirus induced mortality in marine fish in India.

Influence of pH on dynamics of microbial enhanced oil recovery processes using biosurfactant producing Pseudomonas putida: Mathematical modelling and numerical simulation.

In present work, the influence of reservoir pH conditions on dynamics of microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) processes using Pseudomonas putida was analysed numerically from the developed mathematical model for MEOR processes. Further, a new strategy to improve the MEOR performance has also been proposed. It is concluded from present study that by reversing the reservoir pH from highly acidic to low alkaline condition (pH 5-8), flow and mobility of displaced oil, displacement efficiency, and original oil in place (OOIP) recovered gets significantly enhanced, resulting from improved interfacial tension (IFT) reduction by biosurfactants. At pH 8, maximum of 26.1% of OOIP was recovered with higher displacement efficiency. The present study introduces a new strategy to increase the recovery efficiency of MEOR technique by characterizing the biosurfactants for IFTmin/IFTmax values for different pH conditions and subsequently, reversing the reservoir pH conditions at which the IFTmin/IFTmax value is minimum.

Numerical modelling of biophysicochemical effects on multispecies reactive transport in porous media involving Pseudomonas putida for potential microbial enhanced oil recovery application.

pH and resident time of injected slug plays a critical role in characterizing the reservoir for potential microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) application. To investigate MEOR processes, a multispecies (microbes-nutrients) reactive transport model in porous media was developed by coupling kinetic and transport model. The present work differs from earlier works by explicitly determining parametric values required for kinetic model by experimental investigations using Pseudomonas putida at different pH conditions and subsequently performing sensitivity analysis of pH, resident time and water saturation on concentrations of microbes, nutrients and biosurfactant within reservoir. The results suggest that nutrient utilization and biosurfactant production are found to be maximum at pH 8 and 7.5 respectively. It is also found that the sucrose and biosurfactant concentrations are highly sensitive to pH rather than reservoir microbial concentration, while at larger resident time and water saturation, the microbial and nutrient concentrations were lesser due to enhanced dispersion.