Leaves of Moringa oleifera Are Potential Source of Bioactive Compound ß-Carotene: Evidence from In Silico and Quantitative Gene Expression Analysis.

Moringa oleifera is rich in bioactive compounds such as beta-carotene, which have high nutritional values and antimicrobial applications. Several studies have confirmed that bioactive-compound-based herbal medicines extracted from the leaves, seeds, fruits and shoots of M. oleifera are vital to cure many diseases and infections, and for the healing of wounds. The ß-carotene is a naturally occurring bioactive compound encoded by zeta-carotene desaturase (ZDS) and phytoene synthase (PSY) genes. In the current study, computational analyses were performed to identify and characterize ZDS and PSY genes retrieved from Arabidopsis thaliana (as reference) and these were compared with the corresponding genes in M. oleifera, Brassica napus, Brassica rapa, Brassica oleracea and Bixa orellana. The BLAST results revealed that all the plant species considered in this study encode ß-carotene genes with 80-100% similarity. The Pfam analysis on ß-carotene genes of all the investigated plants confirmed that they belong to the same protein family and domain. Similarly, phylogenetic analysis revealed that ß-carotene genes of M. oleifera belong to the same ancestral class. Using the ZDS and PSY genes of Arabidopsis thaliana as a reference, we conducted qRT-PCR analysis on RNA extracted from the leaves of M. oleifera, Brassica napus, Brassica rapa and Bixa orellana. It was noted that the most significant gene expression occurred in the leaves of the studied medicinal plants. We concluded that not only are the leaves of M. oleifera an effective source of bioactive compounds including beta carotene, but also the leaves of Brassica napus, Brassica rapa and Bixa orellana can be employed as antibiotics and antioxidants against bacterial or microbial infections.

Zinc Oxide/Phosphorus-Doped Carbon Nitride Composite as Potential Scaffold for Electrochemical Detection of Nitrofurantoin.

Herein, we present an electrocatalyst constructed by zinc oxide hexagonal prisms/phosphorus-doped carbon nitride wrinkles (ZnO HPs/P-CN) prepared via a facile sonochemical method towards the detection of nitrofurantoin (NF). The ZnO HPs/P-CN-sensing platform showed amplified response and low-peak potential compared with other electrodes. The exceptional electrochemical performance could be credited to ideal architecture, rapid electron/charge transfer, good conductivity, and abundant active sites in the ZnO HPs/P-CN composite. Resulting from these merits, the ZnO HPs/P-CN-modified electrode delivered rapid response (2 s), a low detection limit (2 nM), good linear range (0.01-111 µM), high sensitivity (4.62 µA µM-1 cm2), better selectivity, decent stability (±97.6%), and reproducibility towards electrochemical detection of NF. We further demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed ZnO HPs/P-CN sensor for detecting NF in samples of water and human urine. All the above features make our proposed ZnO HPs/P-CN sensor a most promising probe for detecting NF in natural samples.

Conversion of Non-Optical Material to Photo-Active Nanocomposites through Non-Conventional Techniques for Water Purification by Solar Energy.

Development of optical materials has attracted strong attention from scientists across the world to obtain low band gap energy and become active in field of solar energy. This challenge, which cannot be accomplished by the usual techniques, has overcome through the current study using non-conventional techniques. This study has used explosive reactions to convert non-optical alumina to series of new optical nanocomposites with very low band gap energy for the first time. In this trend, alumina nanoparticles were prepared and modified by explosive reactions using ammonium nitrate as a solid fuel. By using methanol or ethanol as a source of carbon species, three nanocomposites were produced indicating a gradual reduction of the band gap energy of alumina from 4.34 eV to 1.60 eV. These nanocomposites were obtained by modifying alumina via two different carbon species; core-shell structure and carbon nanotubes. This modification led to sharp reduction for the band gap energy to become very sensitive in sunlight. Therefore, these nanocomposites caused fast decolorization and mineralization of green dyes after illuminating in sunlight for ten minutes. Finally, it can be concluded that reduction of the band gap energy introduces new optical materials for developing optical nano-devices and solar cells.