Identification and Validation of Expressed Sequence Tags from Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.) Root.

Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L) Millsp.) is an important food legume crop of rain fed agriculture in the arid and semiarid tropics of the world. It has deep and extensive root system which serves a number of important physiological and metabolic functions in plant development and growth. In order to identify genes associated with pigeonpea root, ESTs were generated from the root tissues of pigeonpea (GRG-295 genotype) by normalized cDNA library. A total of 105 high quality ESTs were generated by sequencing of 250 random clones which resulted in 72 unigenes comprising 25 contigs and 47 singlets. The ESTs were assigned to 9 functional categories on the basis of their putative function. In order to validate the possible expression of transcripts, four genes, namely, S-adenosylmethionine synthetase, phosphoglycerate kinase, serine carboxypeptidase, and methionine aminopeptidase, were further analyzed by reverse transcriptase PCR. The possible role of the identified transcripts and their functions associated with root will also be a valuable resource for the functional genomics study in legume crop.

Molecular identification of sex in Simarouba glauca by RAPD markers for crop improvement strategies.

Due to lack of morphological methods to identify sex at early stage in the plants with long juvenile period the application of molecular markers is expected to facilitate breeding program. The objective of this study is to identify molecular markers linked to sex determination of the plant Simarouba glauca which assists in crop improvement program. Random amplified polymorphic DNA primers were tested on dioeceious and hermaphrodite plant Simarouba glauca. A set of eighty five RAPD primers were screened out of which only five primers were found to be associated with sex. The primer OPU-10 is male specific and OPD-19 primer is female specific. Another primer OPU-19 produced a unique amplification in only hermaphrodite individuals. Female and hermaphrodite specific primer OPS-05 amplified an amplicon in female and hermaphrodite and was absent in male plant. Primer OPW-03 produced amplicon specific to male and hermaphrodite plants and was absent in female plants.

Enhanced production of alkaline thermostable keratinolytic protease from calcium alginate immobilized cells of thermoalkalophilic Bacillus halodurans JB 99 exhibiting dehairing activity.

The thermoalkalophilic Bacillus halodurans JB 99 cells known for production of novel thermostable alkaline keratinolytic protease were immobilized in calcium alginate matrix. Batch and repeated batch cultivation using calcium alginate immobilized cells were studied for alkaline protease production in submerged fermentation. Immobilized cells with 2.5% alginate and 350 beads/flask of initial cell loading showed enhanced production of alkaline protease by 23.2% (5,275 ± 39.4 U/ml) as compared to free cells (4,280 ± 35.4 U/ml) after 24 h. In the semicontinuous mode of cultivation, immobilized cells under optimized conditions produced an appreciable level of alkaline protease in up to nine cycles and reached a maximal value of 5,975 U/ml after the seventh cycle. The enzyme produced from immobilized cells efficiently degraded chicken feathers in the presence of a reducing agent which can help the poultry industry in the management of keratin-rich waste and obtaining value-added products.

A machine learning based method for classification of fractal features of forearm sEMG using Twin Support vector machines.

Classification of surface electromyogram (sEMG) signal is important for various applications such as prosthetic control and human computer interface. Surface EMG provides a better insight into the strength of muscle contraction which can be used as control signal for different applications. Due to the various interference between different muscle activities, it is difficult to identify movements using sEMG during low-level flexions. A new set of fractal features - fractal dimension and Maximum fractal length of sEMG has been previously reported by the authors. These features measure the complexity and strength of the muscle contraction during the low-level finger flexions. In order to classify and identify the low-level finger flexions using these features based on the fractal properties, a recently developed machine learning based classifier, Twin Support vector machines (TSVM) has been proposed. TSVM works on basic learning methodology and solves the classification tasks as two SVMs for each classes. This paper reports the novel method on the machine learning based classification of fractal features of sEMG using the Twin Support vector machines. The training and testing was performed using two different kernel functions - Linear and Radial Basis Function (RBF).

Surface EMG based hand gesture identification using semi blind ICA: validation of ICA matrix analysis.

Surface electromyogram (sEMG) has numerous applications. It has been widely used in various biosignal and neuro rehabilitation applications. There is an urgent need for establishing a simple yet robust system that can be used to identify subtle complex hand actions and gestures for control of prosthesis and other computer assisted devices. Earlier work to identify the hand actions and gestures based on sEMG suffers from limitation that these are suitable for gross actions where there is only one prime-mover muscle involved and not suitable for small subtle and complex muscle contraction. This paper presents the hand gesture identification using sEMG decomposed using semi-blind independent component analysis combined with neural network based classifier. The aim was to provide reliable and natural control for rehabilitation and human computer interaction applications. We have proposed a model based approach where the hand muscle anatomy is known. The system was tested on 5 subjects and with experiments repeated on different days. The system was compared with raw sEMG as used by other researchers. The system is able to classify the different hand actions 100%. In comparison, the classification of the traditional ICA and raw sEMG for the same experiments and similar features was a poor 65% and 60% respectively. This research demonstrates that sEMG can be decomposed to the individual muscle activities using semi-blind ICA. The muscle activity after decomposition can be used to accurately identify small and subtle hand actions and gestures. Finally the ICA source separation was validated with mixing matrix analysis.

Limitations and applications of ICA for surface electromyogram.

Surface electromyogram (SEMG) has numerous applications, but the presence of artefacts and noise, especially at low level of muscle activity make the recordings unreliable. Spectral and temporal overlap can make the removal of artefacts and noise, or separation of relevant signals from other bioelectric signals extremely difficult. Individual muscles may be considered as independent at the local level and this makes an argument for separating the signals using independent component analysis (ICA). In the recent past, due to the easy availability of ICA tools, numbers of researchers have attempted to use ICA for this application. This paper reports research conducted to evaluate the use of ICA for the separation of muscle activity and removal of the artefacts from SEMG. It discusses some of the conditions that could affect the reliability of the separation and evaluates issues related to the properties of the signals and number of sources. The paper also identifies the lack of suitable measure of quality of separation for bioelectric signals and it recommends and tests a more robust measure of separation. The paper also reports tests using Zibulevsky's technique of temporal plotting to identify number of independent sources in SEMG recordings. The theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that ICA is suitable for SEMG signals. The results identify the unsuitability of ICA when the number of sources is greater than the number of recording channels. The results also demonstrate the limitations of such applications due to the inability of the system to identify the correct order and magnitude of the signals. The paper determines the suitability of the use of error measure using simulated mixing matrix and the estimated unmixing matrix as a means identifying the quality of separation of the output. The work demonstrates that even at extremely low level of muscle contraction, and with filtering using wavelets and band pass filters, it is not possible to get the data sparse enough to identify number of independent sources using Zibulevs.ky's technique.

Pigeon pea waste as a novel, inexpensive, substrate for production of a thermostable alkaline protease from thermoalkalophilic Bacillus sp. JB-99.

Thermoalkaliphilic Bacillus sp. JB-99 was grown in a 250 ml Erlenmeyer flask containing 50 ml medium containing (g/l) Pigeon pea waste 10; NaNO3, 5.0; K2HPO4, 5.0; MgSO4 x 2H2O, 0.2 and Na2CO3, 10.0. Incubations were carried out at 50 degrees C on a rotary incubator shaker for 15 h. A high level of extra cellular thermostable protease activity was observed after 24 h incubation. The optimum temperature and pH for activity were 70 degrees C and 11, respectively, so this enzyme showed stable activity at high temperature and under alkaline conditions.

In vitro strategies for selection of eye-spot resistant sugarcane lines using toxins of Helminthosporium sacchari.

In vitro strategies were applied for the selection of eye-spot resistant variants from susceptible sugarcane cultivar Co 419 Different selective units (callus and leaf) of the susceptible cultivar were subjected to sub-lethal to lethal doses of toxins (culture filtrate and partially purified toxin) of H. sacchari, with the objective of improving the efficacy of in vitro selection protocols. All the selective units gave more or less similar response with culture filtrate, but a distinct response was observed when leaf was subjected to partially purified toxin treatment. The response was characterised by the degree of resistance exhibited by the regenerated seedlings.