Role of alpha-crystallin, early-secreted antigenic target 6-kDa protein and culture filtrate protein 10 as novel diagnostic markers in osteoarticular tuberculosis.

Osteoarticular tuberculosis constitutes about 3% of all tuberculosis cases. Early and accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis is a challenging problem especially in the case of osteoarticular tuberculosis owing to the lower number of bacilli. However, an accurate and timely diagnosis of the disease results in an improved efficacy of the given treatment. Besides the limitations of conventional methods, nowadays molecular diagnostic techniques have emerged as a major breakthrough for the early diagnosis of tuberculosis with high sensitivity and specificity. Alpha-crystallin is a dominantly expressed protein responsible for the long viability of the pathogen during the latent phase under certain stress conditions such as hypoxia and nitric oxide stress. Two other proteins-early secreted antigenic target-6 and culture filtrate protein-10-show high expression in the active infective phase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In this article, we focus on the different proteins expressed dominantly in latent/active tuberculosis, and which may be further used as prognostic biomarkers for diagnosing tuberculosis, both in latent and active phases.

Study of Cysteine-Rich Protein 61 Genetic Polymorphism in Predisposition to Fracture Nonunion: A Case Control.

Background. Many factors are responsible for this impaired healing, especially in long bones, but a possible genetic predisposition for the development of this complication remains unknown till now. In the present study, we aim to examine the CYR61 gene polymorphism in fracture nonunion patients and the correlation with clinical findings. Materials and Methods. We performed SNP analysis of the CYR61 gene in 250 fracture nonunion patients and 250 healthy subjects were genotyped in this hospital-based case control study, and 56 cases were further evaluated for mRNA expression of CYR61 by real-time quantitative reverse-transcription PCR. Results. CYR61 gene TT, TG, and GG genotype frequencies of total fracture nonunion cases were 41.6%, 49.2%, and 9.20% and 54.4%, 39.2%, and 6.40% in healthy controls. Heterozygous TG genotype was found statistically significant in fracture nonunion cases compared with that in controls, whereas homozygous mutant GG genotype was not found significant. Moreover, we found that TG + GG genotypes were significantly different in serum expression of CYR61 mRNA when compared with cases (TT genotypes). Conclusions. Our result signifies that genotype of CYR61 affects the mRNA expression and acts as a risk factor that could synergistically increase the susceptibility of a patient to develop fracture nonunion.

Microbiological transformation of L-tyrosine to L-dopa from methanol pretreated biomass of a novel Coriolus versicolor under submerged culture.

The present study is concerned with the microbiological transformation of L-tyrosine to L-dopa by a newly isolated turkey tail mushroom Coriolus versicolor DOB-4. As tyrosinase (catechol oxidase, EC 1.10.3.1) is an extracellular enzyme, therefore biomass was used as an enzyme source in the reaction mixture. Biomass particles were pretreated with methanol and oven dried at 105 °C for 2 h. The optimal L-dopa production was achieved when 1.5 mg/ml L-tyrosine was used as the basal substrate. Thin layer chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography analysis depicted that citric acid supports higher substrate conversion and product formation rates. A noticeable enhancement was observed when process parameters viz. L-tyrosine concentration (1.5 mg/ml), citric acid (1.5 mg/ml), time of incubation (50 min), and reaction temperature (60 °C) were optimized using Plackett-Burman design. The maximum production of L-dopa was found to be 0.872 mg/ml with L-tyrosine consumption of 1.002 mg/ml. The model terms were found highly significant (HS, p ≤ 0.05), suggesting the potential commercial utility of the culture (df = 3, LSD = 0.342).