Towards further understanding the applications of endophytes: enriched source of bioactive compounds and bio factories for nanoparticles.

The most significant issues that humans face today include a growing population, an altering climate, an growing reliance on pesticides, the appearance of novel infectious agents, and an accumulation of industrial waste. The production of agricultural goods has also been subject to a great number of significant shifts, often known as agricultural revolutions, which have been influenced by the progression of civilization, technology, and general human advancement. Sustainable measures that can be applied in agriculture, the environment, medicine, and industry are needed to lessen the harmful effects of the aforementioned problems. Endophytes, which might be bacterial or fungal, could be a successful solution. They protect plants and promote growth by producing phytohormones and by providing biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. Endophytes produce the diverse type of bioactive compounds such as alkaloids, saponins, flavonoids, tannins, terpenoids, quinones, chinones, phenolic acids etc. and are known for various therapeutic advantages such as anticancer, antitumor, antidiabetic, antifungal, antiviral, antimicrobial, antimalarial, antioxidant activity. Proteases, pectinases, amylases, cellulases, xylanases, laccases, lipases, and other types of enzymes that are vital for many different industries can also be produced by endophytes. Due to the presence of all these bioactive compounds in endophytes, they have preferred sources for the green synthesis of nanoparticles. This review aims to comprehend the contributions and uses of endophytes in agriculture, medicinal, industrial sectors and bio-nanotechnology with their mechanism of action.

Design of hACE2-based small peptide inhibitors against spike protein of SARS-CoV-2: a computational approach.

COVID-19 which is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been declared pandemic in 2019. Though there is development of vaccines but there is an emergence requirement of drugs against SARS-CoV-2. Antiviral peptides can be rationally created and improved based on the known structures of viral proteins and their biological targets. In the given study, small peptide inhibitors with three amino acids are designed and docked against SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus using molecular docking approach. All the designed peptides bind at the active site but the highest binding affinity was observed for HisGluAsp. Molecular dynamics was performed to validate the stability and interactions of compound. The molecule has followed the druglikeness properties and with highest probability of being absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract. The results of the current investigation point to the possibility that the identified small peptides may prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, although additional wet-lab tests are still required to confirm these results.

Synergistic role of bacterial consortium to biodegrade toxic dyes containing wastewater and its simultaneous reuse as an added value.

The current environmental research has fascinated the sustainable exploitation of mix bacterial consortium to biodegrade the environmentally-related toxic compounds, including hazardous synthetic dyes. Based on the existing literature evidence, textile and other industrial waste effluents pollute the natural water bodies. Textile effluent contains synthetic dyes which are liberated in the environment without proper treatment. The presence of toxic dyes added to the textile effluents undoubtedly affects the flora and fauna as that untreated water is used for irrigation by local farmers. Many conventional and biological methods are in action for the treatment of wastewater. Physical and chemical processes are expensive as compared to microbial treatments. The use of microbial consortia generates efficient results. Wastewater is a valuable resource, however, up to 80% of wastewater is released to different water matrices. This discernment needs to change for a better tomorrow. In this context, herein, we present a robust microbial-assisted treatment and simultaneously reuse of the treated wastewater as an added value to induce plant growth. Thus, the microbial approach for textile waste treatment release by-product after degradation should be non-toxic for the environment. In the present study, the toxicity of synthetic textile dye named Reactive Red 120, Reactive Orange 122, Reactive Yellow 160, and Reactive Blue 19 was investigated using a bioassay method with plant species namely Sorghum bicolor. Plate and Pot experiment was conducted with respect to untreated Azo dyes, degraded metabolites obtained from single bacteria, and consortium. Efficient Seed germination (89%), shoot length (12.4 cm), root length (15.6 cm) of the plants were observed for bacterial consortium degraded metabolites exposed seeds after comparing with the control. The degraded metabolite also increases protein (45.56 mg/g) and sugar (3.15 mg/g) contents. Bioremediation of various textile industrial effluents saves the ecosystem from the harmful effects of hazardous dyes. The biological decolorization of the textile azo dyes was investigated under co-metabolic conditions. The degraded metabolites can be used to enhance crop productivity and for commercial application. This mandates the current and future research to develop economically feasible and environmentally sustainable wastewater treatment practices.

Topological and system-level protein interaction network (PIN) analyses to deduce molecular mechanism of curcumin.

Curcumin is an important bioactive component of turmeric and also one of the important natural products, which has been investigated extensively. The precise mode of action of curcumin and its impact on system level protein networks are still not well studied. To identify the curcumin governed regulatory action on protein interaction network (PIN), an interectome was created based on 788 key proteins, extracted from PubMed literatures, and constructed by using STRING and Cytoscape programs. The PIN rewired by curcumin was a scale-free, extremely linked biological system. MCODE plug-in was used for sub-modulization analysis, wherein we identified 25 modules; ClueGo plug-in was used for the pathway's enrichment analysis, wherein 37 enriched signalling pathways were obtained. Most of them were associated with human diseases groups, particularly carcinogenesis, inflammation, and infectious diseases. Finally, the analysis of topological characteristic like bottleneck, degree, GO term/pathways analysis, bio-kinetics simulation, molecular docking, and dynamics studies were performed for the selection of key regulatory proteins of curcumin-rewired PIN. The current findings deduce a precise molecular mechanism that curcumin might exert in the system. This comprehensive in-silico study will help to understand how curcumin induces its anti-cancerous, anti-inflammatory, and anti-microbial effects in the human body.

Investigation of Precise Molecular Mechanistic Action of Tobacco-Associated Carcinogen `NNK´ Induced Carcinogenesis: A System Biology Approach.

Cancer is the second deadliest disease listed by the WHO. One of the major causes of cancer disease is tobacco and consumption possibly due to its main component, 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK). A plethora of studies have been conducted in the past aiming to decipher the association of NNK with other diseases. However, it is strongly linked with cancer development. Despite these studies, a clear molecular mechanism and the impact of NNK on various system-level networks is not known. In the present study, system biology tools were employed to understand the key regulatory mechanisms and the perturbations that will happen in the cellular processes due to NNK. To investigate the system level influence of the carcinogen, NNK rewired protein-protein interaction network (PPIN) was generated from 544 reported proteins drawn out from 1317 articles retrieved from PubMed. The noise was removed from PPIN by the method of modulation. Gene ontology (GO) enrichment was performed on the seed proteins extracted from various modules to find the most affected pathways by the genes/proteins. For the modulation, Molecular COmplex DEtection (MCODE) was used to generate 19 modules containing 115 seed proteins. Further, scrutiny of the targeted biomolecules was done by the graph theory and molecular docking. GO enrichment analysis revealed that mostly cell cycle regulatory proteins were affected by NNK.

Isolation and characterization of chitosan-producing bacteria from beaches of chennai, India.

Chitosan is a deacetylated product of chitin produced by chitin deacetylase, an enzyme that hydrolyses acetamido groups of N-acetylglucosamine in chitin. Chitosan is a natural polymer that has great potential in biotechnology and in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. Commercially, it is produced from chitin via a harsh thermochemical process that shares most of the disadvantages of a multistep chemical procedure. It is environmentally unsafe and not easily controlled, leading to a broad and heterogeneous range of products. An alternative or complementary procedure exploiting the enzymatic deacetylation of chitin could potentially be employed, especially when a controlled and well-defined process is required. In this study, 20 strains of bacteria were isolated from soil samples collected from different beaches of Chennai, India. Of these 20 bacterial strains, only 2 strains (S3, S14) are potent degrader of chitin and they are also a good producer of the enzyme chitin deacetylase so as to release chitosan.