Contents

Amylases are enzymes which hydrolyze starch molecules to give diverse products including dextrin and progressively smaller polymers composed of glucose units. These enzymes are of great significance in present day industries ranging from food, fermentation, textile, paper to pharmaceutical industries. Based on growing concern and aware of environmental issues, industries find enzymes as a good alternative over other chemical catalysts. Enzymes from fungal and bacterial sources have dominated applications in industrial sectors. The ease of production and broad spectrum of applications make α-Amylase an industrially valuable biocatalyst. This review focuses on the production of bacterial and fungal α-amylases, their distribution, structural-functional aspects and their use in industrial applications.

Genome Analysis of a human being permits useful insight into the ancestry of that person and also facilitates the determination of weaknesses and susceptibilities of that person towards inherited diseases. The amount of accumulated genome data is increasing at a tremendous rate with the rapid development of genome sequencing technologies and gene prediction is one of the most challenging tasks in genome analysis. Many tools have been developed for gene prediction which still remains as an active research area. Gene prediction involves the analysis of the entire genomic data that is accumulated in the database and hence scrutinizing the predicted genes takes too much of time. However, the computational time can be reduced and the process can be made more effective through the selection of dominant genes. In this paper, a novel method is presented to predict the dominant genes of ALL/AML cancer. First, to train an FF-ANN a combinational data of the input dataset is generated and its dimensionality is reduced through Probability Principal Component Analysis (PPCA). Then, the classified database of ALL/AML cancer is given as the training dataset to design the FF-ANN. After the FF-ANN is designed, the genetic algorithm is applied on the test input sequence and the fitness function is computed using the designed FF-ANN. After that, the genetic operations crossover, mutation and selection are carried out. Finally, through analysis, the optimal dominant genes are predicted.

The paper presents IR data on 4 species of marine molluscan shells collected from Vizag seashore. It is observed that irrespective of species, the mineralogical from of CaCO3 is aragonite. This is due to the fact that Mg present in the shell material acts as a regulator for the deposition of CaCO3. The paper suggests that infrared spectroscopy may be useful to provide valuable information in the biological system as it affords rapid qualitative and identification of biominerals.

The paper presents Dielectric data on different types of molluscan shells collected from Chennai seashore. It is observed that irrespective of species, the mineralogical from of CaCO3 is aragonite. This is due to the fact that Mg present in the shell material acts as a regulator for the deposition of CaCO3 . It is interesting to note that dielectric parameters of aragonite are low when compared to shells and calcite. The significant variations in dielectric parameters such as dielectric constant, dielectric loss and electric conductivity of molluscan shells may be attributed to the free water that present in the shell as the composition if calcium carbonate and the components of the organic matrix of the shell is more or less the same irrespective of species.

Information Science is an interdisciplinary domain and plays a great role in the development at large. Information Science and Informatics normally treated as a synonym in academia worldwide. Information Science/Informatics is an applied science branch and thus with the combination of other areas and subject created many other knowledge cluster and field viz. Geo Information Science, Chemo Information Sciences, Environmental Information Science. Bio Information Sciences may be considered as a field of intersection of Biology and Information Science. Bio Informatics may be treated as one of the areas of Bio Information Sciences. Indian universities moving towards education, training, and research in interdisciplinary fields and as a result Bio related Informatics become vital. Higher Educational Institution’s number wise India also holds a rank in the world. In recent past private universities expanded rapidly. Many of them started offering Bio Informatics program in different level of study. This is a theoretical framework in terms of research paper and here several knowledge on information sciences, informatics with reference to Bio Informatics have been provided. The paper also highlighted emerging other allied areas including future potentialities in brief.

The study was conducted in the months of July- September, 2017 to assess the socio economic impacts of desertification on local communities in Yusufari Local area of Yobe State, Nigeria. A total of 286 respondents comprising of 280 Local community dwellers and 6 officials of the department of Agriculture and Forestry participated in the study. Descriptive survey method of research was employed using both qualitative and quantitative data. Study data was collected using closed ended self made questionnaire and structured Interview Guide. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 6 was also used to analyse data on respondents’ characteristics, socio economic impacts of desertification as well as respondents perception of control measures using descriptive statistics. Study findings revealed that married men constituted biggest portion of the respondents while illiterate crop and live stock farmers dominated the occupation groupings. Dominant tribes happened to be Kanuri followed by Fulani and Hausa. Social impacts of desertification were found to be numerous ranging from relocation of houses or whole settlements, a town called Kaska relocated 2 times in less than 30 years, drying up of sources of water, forced migrations as well as Sporadic conflicts and loss of biodiversity and soil erosion. Economically, the impacts manifested in the farm of loss of soil fertility, reduction in farmlands, grazing and fishing sites with resultant drop in crop yields and number of animals and deaths. Transportation was also found to be seriously affected. Similarly, the local people were found to be fully aware of the concept of desertification. and its impacts but did not stop acts of deforestation nor engaged in any tangible form of reforestation activities. Governments’ efforts towards combating the menace were not enough. Based on these findings and others not mentioned here, it was recommended that local people should be well enlightened on the impacts of desertification and government’s programmes to curb the menace, deforestation laws should be strictly adhered to, shelter beats and nursery plots should also be established and maintained.

In fastest Developing countries, disease burden make an unhealthy and undeveloped. It is still challenge to prevent Tuberculosis (TB) even though lot of preventable and curable measurements taken up by both state and central governments in India. In this context we are focused to explore the new 3D drug target structurally and functionally by using bioinformatics tool. We searched the new drug target by comparative search analysis in KEGG data base (previous work not published). One of the new drug target Isochorismatesynthase (MenF) was selected and performed sequence alignment, Homology Modeling, validation and performed secondary structure analysis. Moduller results showed that the 3D-Model is accurate and accepted model. Validation of 3D model is confirmed that, there is 99.03% amino acids are in allowed and generously allowed region of Ramachandran plot, this can be useful for further steps in the insilico research. ProsA analysis provides the local and over all model quality within the Z scores limits. Pdb sum analysis provided the main chain, side chain and active site residues. This clearly explains the utilization of bioinformatics tools in the process of drug development to young researchers.

Botanical insecticides are naturally occurring chemicals extracted from plants. This study aims to analyze the insecticidal activity of bioactive compounds present in the aqueous extract of Acalypha indica and to analyze the efficacy of pheromone baited traps in integrated pest management. In this study, various bioactive compounds present in the aqueous extract of Acalypha indica were analyzed by phytochemical screening and GC-MS analysis. The molecular properties of the compounds identified from GC-MS analysis were screened based on Tice rules using bioinformatics molecular property analysis tools. Out of 8, four compounds namely oleic acid, phytol, flavone and estra- 1, 3, 5[10]-trien-17a`-ol strictly follows Tice rules. The aqueous extracts were used for the screening of insecticidal activity against 3rd instar larvae of Leucinodes orbonalis by diet incorporation bioassay. On observation it was revealed that the aqueous extract of Acalypha indica induce antifeedant effect, which was very efficient at 80% concentration. Three pheromone baited traps namely yellow sticky trap, bucket trap and sleeve trap were used to evaluate its efficacy in pest management. From the evaluation, out of three pheromone baited traps, sleeve traps performed statistically better than others, trapping higher population of adult Leucinodes orbonalis. The sticky traps captured the highest number of non-target insects, mostly being ants, flies, and beetles. In bucket trap moderate non-target populations were present. Thus, on the comparative study the preliminary screening shows that Acalypha indica can be used to derive a novel insecticide and pheromone baited sleeve trap shows positive integrated pest management.

The development of a molecular docking tool usually starts with an efficient search algorithm, which places the ligand in the active site of the target protein in numerous different positions, orientations, and, in flexible docking, conformations. In the present study, fractionated methanolic extract was used for cytotoxic activity studies and found to be very effective. Detailed analysis of this fraction revealed that the major compound present in the fraction is quercetin, a flavanoid compound.

Anthers containing uninucleate pollen grains were cultured on MS and NB basal media supplemented with different auxins (IAA, NAA, 2,4-D) and cytokinins (BA and Kn) in various concentrations and combinations. MS medium was superior to NB medium in enhancing frequency of callus formation in anthers. Multiple shoots and roots were produced during subculture of callus on fresh medium supplemented with BA.