Bio Technology

Industrial wastewater containing substances that may affect human health and are difficult to degrade is a major health concern, where examples include effluents containing heavy metals. The contamination of receiving water bodies by heavy metals constitutes a major environmental concern as these contaminants are extremely toxic, recalcitrant, and exhibit a tendency to bio-accumulate. Although heavy metals could be removed from industrial wastewater by a range of physicochemical treatment technologies such as precipitation, ion exchange, adsorption, electrochemical processes, and membrane processes; however, regulatory standards are not always sufficient. The objective of this paper is to study the amenability of using the bacterial strain of Bacillus Subtilis isolated from the surface of natural Egyptian phosphate as an alternative for the conventional techniques of treatment. It is found that Zn removal increased from 80% to 93%, while Pb removal varied from 95.55% to 99.34 % by the addition of 10-20 ml of bacterial strain (Cell + Product) in a solution having 50 mg/l Zn2+ and 30 mg/l pb2+ ions. The relative removal capacity for metals was in the order Pb< Zn.

The leaves of Tectona grandis (Verbanaceae) was subjected to hydrodistillation in order to obtain the essential oil from the plant. The pale yellow essential oil gave a percentage yield of 0.184%. Relative percentages of individual component were analyzed by GC/GC-MS. A total of fifty-four (54) constituents were identified representing 86.5% of the total essential oil fraction. Oxygenated monoterpenes, sesquiterpene hydrocarbons, oxygenated sesquiterpenes, apocarotenoids, phenylpropanoids and non-terpene derivatives were the various classes of compounds identified. The LC50 value from the brine shrimp toxicity assay was 183.29µg/ml. The oil extract was also subjected to antibacterial assay and it showed significant activities against all the clinical test organisms used except Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Microorganisms have a tremendous influence on their environment through the transfer of energy, charge, and materials across a complex biotic mineral–solution interface. The bio-modification of mineral surfaces involves the complex action of microorganism on the mineral surface. The manner, in which bacteria affect the surface reactivity and the mechanism of adsorption and accumulation of the primary data in this area are only starting. Bio-Processing involves the selective removal of undesirable mineral constituents from an ore through microbe-mineral interactions in the processes such as selective flotation and flocculation. At the same time, bio-sorption has made a considerable progress in moving from theory to industrial practice as it is not only environmental useful but also more economical than many other processes. The bio-flotation, bio-flocculation and bio-sorption processes concern the mineral response to the bacterium presence, which is essentially interplay between microorganism and the physicochemical properties of the mineral surface, such as the atomic and electronic structures, the net charge/potential, the acid–base properties, and the wettability of the surface. The adhesion of microorganisms to minerals result in alteration of surface chemistry of minerals relevant to beneficiation process due to a consequence of the formation of a biofilm on the surface or bio-catalyzed surface oxidation or reduction products. There is an urgent need for developing basic knowledge that would underpin biotechnological innovations in the natural resource processing technologies that deliver competitive solutions.

World population growth and increasing needs to various industries have led to the accumulation of a wide variety of contaminants in the environment and natural resources. The use of synthetic dyes is increasing in many areas. More than 10,000 chemically different dyes are being manufactured. Synthetic dyes have been widely used in many industries such as textile, tannery, food, pharmaceutical, pulp and paper, paint, plastics, electroplating, and cosmetics industries.The effluent discharge from these industries has destructive effects on the environment and human health; reducing sunlight penetration and gas solubility in aqueous ecosystems and mutagenic and carcinogenic effects in living organisms. Interest in the pollution potential of textile dyes has been primarily prompted by concern over their possible toxicity and carcinogenicity. Even though physico-chemical methods are effective in dye removal, problems such as the overall cost, regeneration, secondary pollutants, limited versatility, interactions with other wastewater constituents, and residual sludge generation limit their usage. As an alternative, biological treatments are a relatively inexpensive way to remove dyes from wastewater. The use of biological methods such as bioaccumulation and biosorption through bioflocculation technique is suitable for the removal of such dyes from wastewaters. In this study, bacterial strain of Bacillus subtilis has been used for the removal of methyl violet dye from an Egyptian textile effluent. More than 98 % removal is achieved through application of bioflocculation technique. Complete characterization for the textile effluent before and after treatment with bacterial strain has been done including TSS, TDS and turbidity. At the same time, physicochemical characterization of Bacillus subtilis bacterial strain was studied.

Prodigiosin is a powerful red pyrrole pigment produced by several bacteria, especially in Serratia marcescens. Prodigiosin has a wide biological activity profile with antifungal, immunosuppressive and anti-proliferative activity. Investigations were made in the present study to identify the activity of Prodigiosin against virus and bacteria related affected diseases. 3D modeling of HBV, HIV, HCV, Pl.vivax, and H1N1proteins were performed by comparative modeling approach using PDB ID’s:1QGT, 1ESX, 1CU1, 1V0B, 2WR3 as template in MODELLER program. The best models were chosen based on Procheck analysis, energy minimized and applied for active site description in QsiteFinder. The Ligand-Protein interactions were calculated by autodock tool to monitor the probable drug targets and their applications.

In present study, calli of commercial indica rice variety PAU 201 were transformed following particle gun methods with the GUS gene (encoding ?-glucuronidase) for its transient expression. Various biological and physical parameters like age of calli (weeks), preculture treatment prior to bombardment (hrs), post-bombardment incubation time (hrs), helium pressure (psi), vacuum pressure (mm Hg), distance from stopping plate to target tissue (cm), number of bombardments per Petri dish were studied. Optimized conditions include 4 weeks old fresh calli bombarded twice at helium and vacuum pressure of 1100 psi & 28mm Hg, keeping target distance 9cm with 12 hours pre-culture prior to bombardment and 72 hours post bombardment incubation duration gave a transient GUS expression of 32-39%. The parameters of this study could be used to improve the transient expression, enabling stable expression of introduced genes using callus as target tissue.

If survival data follows a specific survival distribution (weibull, exponential), survival probabilities can be estimated by using the specific survival function. Alternate easy and assumptions free methods for computing the survival probabilities are Kaplan-Meier and Bootstrap survival functions. The aim of present study is to compare the two non-parametric methods under the influence of different percentage of censoring presented in four different data sets “Leukaemia data set, Stanford Heart Transplant data set, Thalassaemia data set and Lung cancer data set”. Results of analysis show that the performance of Kaplan-Meier survival function is better than the Bootstrap survival function. This is due to the easy concept, less time, less time, easily availability as well as in terms of survival probabilities

Proteases are one of the major causative agents used in the biological systems for the inter conversion of protenacious matter. This fact has led to the exploitation of especially bacterial proteases for their use in various industries and in such scenario, the present study explored the potential of the newly isolated soil bacterial isolates, B1, B3, B4 & G2 for the production of proteases using protease specific broth media at 30oC & 120rpm for five days by shake flask culturing method. In the results, the bacterial isolate B3 has emerged as the best protease producer strain with ~52U of enzyme activity by 48Hrs of cultivation and this B1strain was identified as Pseudomonas sp. SPSU B3, the other bacterial strain B4 was found as species with an extended period 72hrs of non-growth associated protease production (~45U) and this strain was identified as Aneurinibacillus migulanus sp. SPSU B4. The other two bacterial strains B1 & G2 were also found to be of comparable protease activity and hence deserve further studies on optimization and production of protease along with the strains of B3 & B4.

The study was carried out to assess genetic diversity among sixty sorghum accessions from the national germplasm collection using microsatellite markers. Genetic diversity and relationship among the sixty accessions were evaluated using 24 microsatellites. The 24 markers generated 64 alleles; the mean number of alleles was 2.773, indicating a medium range of diversity among the sixty sorghum accessions compared to other genetic diversity studies in sorghum using microsatellites, the average polymorphic information content (PIC) (0.575) gave an indication that the microsatellites are informative. Microsatellites cluster analysis resolved the sixty sorghum accessions into three major clusters. The percent similarity between the sorghum accessions ranged from 56% to 89%. Most of accessions clustered according to geographical site of the collection. Heterozygosity in the sixty sorghum accessions was very low .Observed heterozygosity ranged from 0 to 0.0333 as against the expected heterozygosity of 0.4263 to 0.7708.

False smut, caused by Ustilaginoidea virens, has recently been found in temperate agro-climatic conditions of Kashmir and is sporadic where rice is cultivated. In this study, rice false smut was surveyed in major rice production areas of Kashmir during two seasons. Disease incidence and severity varied significantly between seasons and locations. Seed germination in smut infected samples was 72.4% which is 21.45 per cent lower than the non - smutted samples (92.20%). Shoot and rood length were reduced to the extent of 32.53 and 22.65 per cent, respectively. Rice genotypes Jhelum and Shalimar rice-1 were found resistant while Pusa sughandh 3 and 5 were highly susceptible to false smut. Kashmir valley being mono cropped area of rice in Kharif season, further studies are needed to investigate the viability of the fungal spores and sclerotia during winter, variation between fungal isolates, ability to produce mycotoxins and devise control measures using integrated disease management practices.