Ocular thelaziasis in a 7-month-old infant.

Human thelaziasis is a zoonotic eye disease caused by a nematode parasite called Thelazia. In India, seven human cases of Thelazia have been reported earlier. This is the first case report of an infant infected with Thelazia. During the month of July, 2012, the infant was presented with an eye problem to the eye clinic from a village of Dibrugarh. Five worms (three female and two male) were recovered from the left eye of the infant. Thelazia infection is rare in infant, and report of this case is suggestive of prevalence of infection in the area and warrants further investigation.

Molecular analysis of drought tolerance in tea by cDNA-AFLP based transcript profiling.

A cDNA-AFLP approach was used to identify transcript and/or genes specifically expressed in response to drought in tea. Drought was artificially induced and whole genome transcript profiling was done at three different stages-6 days before wilting, 3 days before wilting and at wilting stage of both tolerant and susceptible cultivars, and genetic differences was thus visualized as polymorphisms in the transcriptome. The cDNA-AFLP technique allowed genes and transcripts to be identified in the tolerant genotype (TV-23) whose expression is responsive to drought stress. The cluster analysis revealed two types of clustering-type I separated the tolerant and susceptible cultivar, whereas type II separated the time point of sample and this may be grouped as early and late responsive transcripts. 108 transcript derived fragments were identified as differentially expressed in tolerant genotypes of which 89 sequences could be obtained. Fifty-nine of them showed homology in the public databases. Functional ontology showed genes related to carbohydrate metabolism, response to stress, protein modification process and translation. Cluster I includes five fragments and cluster II includes 25 fragments. Other genes strongly expressed in response to drought in tolerant genotype would help us in identifying and determining the genetic basis of mechanisms involved in conferring drought tolerance in tea.

Identification of drought tolerant progenies in tea by gene expression analysis.

Understanding the genes that govern tea plant (Camellia sinensis) architecture and response to drought stress is urgently needed to enhance breeding in tea with improved water use efficiency. Field drought is a slow mechanism and the plants go through an adaptive process in contrast to the drastic changes of rapid dehydration in case of controlled experiments. We identified a set of drought responsive genes under controlled condition using SSH, and validated the identified genes and their pattern of expression under field drought condition. The study was at three stages of water deficit stress viz., before wilting, wilting and recovery, which revealed a set of genes with higher expression at before wilting stage including dehydrin, abscissic acid ripening protein, glutathione peroxidase, cinnamoyl CoA reductase, calmodulin binding protein. The higher expression of these genes was related with increase tolerance character of DT/TS-463 before wilting, these five tolerant progenies could withstand drought stress and thus are candidates for breeding. We observed that physiological parameter like water use efficiency formed a close group with genes such as calmodulin related, DRM3, hexose transporter, hydrogen peroxide induced protein, ACC oxidase, lipase, ethylene responsive transcription factor and diaminopimelate decarboxylase, during wilting point. Our data provides valuable information for the gene components and the dynamics of gene expression in second and third leaf against drought stress in tea, which could be regarded as candidate targets potentially associated with drought tolerance. We propose that the identified five tolerant progenies on the basis of their drought tolerance can thus be utilised for future breeding programmes.

Proline accumulation in lemongrass (Cymbopogon flexuosus Stapf.) due to heavy metal stress.

Toxic heavy metals viz. lead, mercury and cadmium induced differential accumulation of proline in lemongrass (Cymbopogon flexuosus Stapf.) grown in soil amended with 50, 100, 200, 350 and 500 mg kg(-1) of the metals have been studied. Proline accumulation was found to be metal specific, organ specific and linear dose dependant. Further, proline accumulation following short term exposure (two months after transplantation) was higher than long term exposure (nine months after transplantation). Proline accumulation following short term exposure was 2.032 to 3.839 micro moles g(-1) for cadmium (50-200 mg kg(-1)); the corresponding range for mercury was 1.968 to 5.670 micro moles g(-1) and 0.830 to 4.567 micro moles g(-1) for lead (50-500 mg kg(-1) for mercury and lead). Proline accumulation was consistently higher in young tender leaf than old leaf, irrespective of the metal or duration of exposure. For cadmium treatment proline level was 2.032 to 3.839 micro moles g(-1) for young leaves while the corresponding value for old leaf was 1.728 to 2.396 micro moles g(-1) following short term exposure. The same trend was observed for the other two metals and duration of exposure. For control set proline accumulation in root was 0.425 micro moles g(-1) as against 0.805 and 0.533 micro moles g(-1) in young and old leaves respectively indicating that proline accumulation in root are lower than leaves, under both normal and stressed condition.

Response of Java citronella (Cymbopogon winterianus Jowitt) to toxic heavy metal cadmium.

Cadmium at 200 mg kg-1 soil and above concentrations was fatal as growth was inhibited ultimately leading to death of Java citronella (Cymbopogon winterianus Jowitt.). The surviving plants at 50 and 100 mg kg-1 treatments also exhibited pronounced retardation of growth and biomass yield. There was considerable reduction in the level of essential oil in herbage and oil quality deteriorated. Cadmium accumulation profile showed that highest accumulation was in root, followed by stem, leaf sheath and leaf. Very high accumulation in root for higher doses appeared to be the reason for fatality.