Physiological and Multi-Omics Approaches for Explaining Drought Stress Tolerance and Supporting Sustainable Production of Rice.

Drought differs from other natural disasters in several respects, largely because of the complexity of a crop's response to it and also because we have the least understanding of a crop's inductive mechanism for addressing drought tolerance among all abiotic stressors. Overall, the growth and productivity of crops at a global level is now thought to be an issue that is more severe and arises more frequently due to climatic change-induced drought stress. Among the major crops, rice is a frontline staple cereal crop of the developing world and is critical to sustaining populations on a daily basis. Worldwide, studies have reported a reduction in rice productivity over the years as a consequence of drought. Plants are evolutionarily primed to withstand a substantial number of environmental cues by undergoing a wide range of changes at the molecular level, involving gene, protein and metabolite interactions to protect the growing plant. Currently, an in-depth, precise and systemic understanding of fundamental biological and cellular mechanisms activated by crop plants during stress is accomplished by an umbrella of -omics technologies, such as transcriptomics, metabolomics and proteomics. This combination of multi-omics approaches provides a comprehensive understanding of cellular dynamics during drought or other stress conditions in comparison to a single -omics approach. Thus a greater need to utilize information (big-omics data) from various molecular pathways to develop drought-resilient crop varieties for cultivation in ever-changing climatic conditions. This review article is focused on assembling current peer-reviewed published knowledge on the use of multi-omics approaches toward expediting the development of drought-tolerant rice plants for sustainable rice production and realizing global food security.

Development of latent Interferon alpha 2b as a safe therapeutic for treatment of Hepatitis C virus infection.

Interferon therapy for the treatment of hepatitis C virus infection has very limited clinical application due to short serum half-life and side effects of therapy in systemic route of administration. In the present study, we have focused to improve the interferon therapy by overcoming the limitation of side effects. We hypothesized that latent interferon alpha 2b (IFNα2b) produced by fusion of Latency associated protein (LAP) domain of TGFß and IFNα2b having HCV NS3 protease cleavage site as linker that will be activated only at target site (liver) by viral protease (HCV NS3 protease) present on the surface of infected cells. The fusion proteins were expressed in pichia pastoris as homodimer and cleaved by recombinant HCV NS3 protease in vitro into two fragments corresponding to the IFNα-2b and LAP respectively. The latency of chimeric proteins and biological activity after treatment with HCV NS3 protease was assessed by cytopathic effect inhibition assay in A594 cells infected with encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV) and reduction in HCV viral load in Huh7 cells. The HCV NS3 protease was present on the surface of HCV replicating Huh7 cells in amount that activated half of the effective concentration (EC50) of latent IFNα2b fusion protein. As free circulating HCV NS3 protease was not detected in sera from chronic HCV patients and in vitro cleavage of intact latent IFNα2b fusion protein was not observed with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) isolated from chronic HCV patients, thus there are less likely chances of activation and off target binding of latent IFNα2b to show side effects during systemic route of administration. Therefore, most of the side effects of interferon can be overwhelmed at the cost of 50% reduced biological activity. Thus, the use of latent IFNα2b can be considered again as an option for treatment of HCV infection in combination with direct acting antivirals rather than alone with improved safety profile.

Use of Moringa oleifera Flower Pod Extract as Natural Preservative and Development of SCAR Marker for Its DNA Based Identification.

The use of Moringa oleifera as natural food preservative has been evaluated in the present study. In addition, for quality assurance, the study has also been focused on the shelf life of product to authenticate the identification of plant by development of DNA based marker. Among the different extracts prepared from flower pods of Moringa oleifera, methanol and aqueous extract exhibited high antibacterial and antioxidant activity, respectively. The high phenolic contents (53.5 ± 0.169 mg GAE/g) and flavonoid contents (10.9 ± 0.094 mg QE/g) were also recorded in methanol and aqueous extract, respectively. Due to instability of bioactive compounds in aqueous extract, methanol extract is considered as potent natural preservative. The shelf life of methanol extract was observed for two months at 4°C under dark conditions. The developed SCAR primers (MOF217/317/MOR317) specifically amplified a fragment of 317 bp from DNA of Moringa oleifera samples collected from different regions of Punjab province of Pakistan. The methanol extract of Moringa oleifera flower pods has great potential to be used as natural preservative and nutraceutical in food industry.