Assessment of various forms of cellulose-based Luffa cylindrica (mat, flakes and powder) reinforced polydimethylsiloxane composites for oil sorption and organic solvents absorption.

Oil spillage has damaged public health noticeably and contributed to significant environmental deterioration. As a result, a significant amount of effort has been spent on investigating and developing the sorbent materials capable of separating oil from water. Thus, the sorbent materials that could be effective particularly in oil spill disposal and resolve such environmental issue remain to be explored. We have proposed luffa cylindrica (LC)-polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite forms to remove the oil and organic components that might be hazardous to aquatic organisms. The scaffolds were fabricated using hand lay-up method with various forms of luffa cylindrica i.e., LC mat, flakes and powder. Various characterizations such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), effective porosity, surface wettability, mechanical stability, cytotoxicity and sorption behavior with respect to oil, phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and few organic solvents were performed. The results showed that the scaffold in combination with P-L flakes was highly effective in eradicating oil spills and removing harmful components of crude oil. Scaffolds composed of P-L mat, P-L flakes, P-L powder, and PDMS (P) exhibited oil absorption efficacy around 16.09 ± 4.62 %, 24.49 ± 3.55 %, 15.52 ± 2.67 % and 5.52 ± 1.44 %, respectively. We anticipate that the proposed scaffolds have the tremendous potential to provide a solution to this significant environmental remediation issue and to serve as a cost-effective method for removing oil spills and hazardous crude oil components.

Comparative Molecular Characterization to Reveal Surface Behaviour of Non-proteolytic Bromelain Mutants.

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that results in the systemic inflammation principally affecting the capsule covering the articulating ends of the synovial joints. Pharmacological treatment involving analgesics and anti-inflammatory drugs including steroids suppresses the symptoms and has no effect on disease progression. However, disease modifying anti rheumatic drugs (DMARD) used for the treatment were still analysed for their long-term effects. METHODS: Bromelain has been widely used as phytotherapeutic drug owing to its anti-inflammatory, analgesic, anti-tumor and fibrinolytic properties. Bromelain refers to the combination of thiol proteases available in the extract of Ananas comosus. The fibrinolytic property confers to the reduced pannus development and hence the prevention of disease progression. RESULTS: It had been inferred that the observed clinical significance may not be solely accounted for its proteolytic property but also may be due to its hormone-like behaviour (i.e.) non-canonical interactions to initiate the signal transduction pathway. The hormone-like behaviour has been studied in cell models, suggesting that bromelain acts at system level. In the present study, molecular behaviour of the wild-type and mutant proteins has been studied by simulating the predicted structure in an aqueous system. The comparative study of the mutants revealed that the mutant with both C26A and H158F mutations has the similar surface properties compared to the other mutants and can be used in studying the non-enzymatic interactions. CONCLUSION: Thus, this study may prove to be a tool in experimental studies to understand the hormone-like behaviour and in the construction of oral immunogenic synthetic peptides for treating inflamed conditions.

Genome-wide identification and functional annotation of miRNAs in anti-inflammatory plant and their cross-kingdom regulation in Homo sapiens.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are newly discovered non-coding small (~17-24 nucleotide) RNAs that regulate gene expression of its target mRNA at the post-transcriptional levels. In this study, total 12,593 ESTs of Curcuma longa were taken from database of expressed sequence tags (dbEST) and clustered into 2821 contigs using EGassembler web server. Precursor miRNAs (pre-miRNAs) were predicted from these contigs that folded into stem-loop structure using MFold server. Thirty-four mature C. longa miRNAs (clo-miRNAs) were identified from pre-miRNAs having targets involved in various important functions of plant such as self-defence, growth and development, alkaloid metabolic pathway and ethylene signalling process. Sequence analysis of identified clo-miRNAs indicated that 56% miRNAs belong to ORF and 44% belong to non-ORF region. clo-mir-5 and clo-mir-6 were established as the conserved miRNAs, whereas clo-mir-20 was predicted to be the most stable miRNA. Phylogenetic analysis carried out by molecular evolutionary genetics analysis (MEGA) software indicated close evolutionary relationship of clo-mir-5075 with osa-MIR5075. Further, identified clo-miRNAs were checked for their cross-kingdom regulatory potential. clo-mir-14 was found to regulate various gene transcripts in humans that has been further investigated for its biostability in foetal bovine serum (FBS). The results indicated higher degree of stability of clo-mir-14 (48 h) in FBS. Thus, contribution of this miRNA to the cellular immune response during the inflamed condition of rheumatoid arthritis and adequate stability may make it a good choice for the therapeutic agent in near future.