Overexpression of CaMYB78 transcription factor enhances resistance response in chickpea against Fusarium oxysporum and negatively regulates anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway.

Chickpea, an important grain legume, suffers from considerable loss of yield due to Fusarium wilt disease. Inaccessibility of resistant gene pool among cultivars and lack of report of resistance, genes from alien sources have been the major constraints for resistance development in this valuable crop. However, along with some other transcription factors, MYB78 was significantly upregulated during chickpea-Fusarium interplay in resistant chickpea genotype. Being a highly recalcitrant species, the transformation of this important crop remained non-reproducible until recently. Following a tissue culture independent plumular meristem transformation protocol, introgression of CaMYB78 TF finally became feasible in chickpea. The overexpressed plants developed resistance against the pathogen but the anthocyanin production in transformed flowers was perturbed. In silico analyses of the anthocyanin biosynthetic key gene promoters reported the occurrence of multiple MYB-binding cis elements. Detailed molecular analyses establish the differential regulatory roles of CaMYB78, resistance response against Foc1 on one hand and suppression of pigmentation during flower development on the other, which is an innovative finding of its kind.

Defence response in plants and animals against a common fungal pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum.

Plant pathogens emerging as threat to human and animal health has been a matter of concern within the scientific community. Fusarium oxysporum, predominantly a phytopathogen, can infect both plants and animals. As a plant pathogen, F. oxysporum is one of the most economically damaging pathogen. In humans, F. oxysporum can infect immunocompromised individuals and is increasingly being considered as a problematic pathogen. Mycotoxins produced by F. oxysporum supress the innate immune pathways in both plants and animals. Hence, F. oxysporum is the perfect example for studying similarities and differences between defence strategies adopted by plants and animals. In this review we will discuss the innate immune response of plant and animal hosts for protecting against F. oxysporum infection. Such studies will be helpful for identifying genes, protein and metabolites with antifungal properties suitable for protecting humans.

A novel plant lectin, NTL-125, interferes with SARS-CoV-2 interaction with hACE2.

COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus has had profound impact on the world in the past two years. Intense research is going on to find effective drugs to combat the disease. Over the past year several vaccines were approved for immunization. But SARS-CoV-2 being an RNA virus is continuously mutating to generate new variants, some of which develop features of immune escape. This raised serious doubts over the long-term efficacy of the vaccines. We have identified a unique mannose binding plant lectin from Narcissus tazetta bulb, NTL-125, which effectively inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication in Vero-E6 cell line. In silico docking studies revealed that NTL-125 has strong affinity to viral Spike RBD protein, preventing it from attaching to hACE2 receptor, the gateway to cellular entry. Binding analyses revealed that all the mutant variants of Spike protein also have stronger affinity for NTL-125 than hACE2. The unique α-helical tail of NTL-125 plays most important role in binding to RBD of Spike. NTL-125 also interacts effectively with some glycan moieties of S-protein in addition to amino acid residues adding to the binding strength. Thus, NTL-125 is a highly potential antiviral compound of natural origin against SARS-CoV-2 and may serve as an important therapeutic for management of COVID-19.

Development of a hybrid proximal sensing method for rapid identification of petroleum contaminated soils.

Using 108 petroleum contaminated soil samples, this pilot study proposed a new analytical approach of combining visible near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (VisNIR DRS) and portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (PXRF) for rapid and improved quantification of soil petroleum contamination. Results indicated that an advanced fused model where VisNIR DRS spectra-based penalized spline regression (PSR) was used to predict total petroleum hydrocarbon followed by PXRF elemental data-based random forest regression was used to model the PSR residuals, it outperformed (R(2)=0.78, residual prediction deviation (RPD)=2.19) all other models tested, even producing better generalization than using VisNIR DRS alone (RPD's of 1.64, 1.86, and 1.96 for random forest, penalized spline regression, and partial least squares regression, respectively). Additionally, unsupervised principal component analysis using the PXRF+VisNIR DRS system qualitatively separated contaminated soils from control samples. CAPSULE: Fusion of PXRF elemental data and VisNIR derivative spectra produced an optimized model for total petroleum hydrocarbon quantification in soils.