Isocitrate dehydrogenase of Helicobacter pylori potentially induces humoral immune response in subjects with peptic ulcer disease and gastritis

Background

H. pylori causes gastritis and peptic ulcers and is a risk factor for the development of gastric carcinoma. Many of the proteins such as urease, porins, flagellins and toxins such as lipo-polysaccharides have been identified as potential virulence factors which induce proinflammatory reaction. We report immunogenic potentials of isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICD), an important house keeping protein of H. pylori.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Amino acid sequences of H. pylori ICD were subjected to in silico analysis for regions with predictably high antigenic indexes. Also, computational modelling of the H. pylori ICD as juxtaposed to the E. coli ICD was carried out to determine levels of structure similarity and the availability of surface exposed motifs, if any. The icd gene was cloned, expressed and purified to a very high homogeneity. Humoral response directed against H. pylori ICD was detected through an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 82 human subjects comprising of 58 patients with H. pylori associated gastritis or ulcer disease and 24 asymptomatic healthy controls. The H. pylori ICD elicited potentially high humoral immune response and revealed high antibody titers in sera corresponding to endoscopically-confirmed gastritis and ulcer disease subjects. However, urea-breath-test negative healthy control samples and asymptomatic control samples did not reveal any detectable immune responses. The ELISA for proinflammatory cytokine IL-8 did not exhibit any significant proinflammatory activity of ICD.

Conclusions/Significance

ICD of H. pylori is an immunogen which interacts with the host immune system subsequent to a possible autolytic-release and thereby significantly elicits humoral responses in individuals with invasive H. pylori infection. However, ICD could not significantly stimulate IL8 induction in a cultured macrophage cell line (THP1) and therefore, may not be a notable proinflammatory agent.     

Phenolic constituents and genetic profile of Hypericum perforatum L. from India

The content of hypericins (hypericin and pseudohypericin), hyperforin, and flavonoids (rutin, hyperoside, quercitrin, and quercetin) and genetic profiles of eight accessions of Hypericum perforatum L., collected from different locations in India, have been determined. The secondary metabolite content was determined using a highly selective LC/MS/MS method. Pearson and Spearman's correlation coefficient were used to investigate the relationships between the secondary metabolites and a significant positive correlation was found between hypericin and pseudohypericin contents. Genetic profiling was undertaken using the random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and single sequence repeat (SSR) methods. Among the 49 random primers used for the initial screening, only nine yielded polymorphic RAPD profiles. The SSR analysis shows that seven out of the 11 primers were polymorphic. There exists only a partial correlation between the chemical content and genetic profiling data among the accessions under study.     

Assessment of biological activities of chitosan Schiff base tagged with medicinal plants

A chitosan Schiff base with an aromatic aldehyde was synthesized and characterized by FTIR and NMR spectroscopies. Furthermore, the degree of substitution was calculated based on the ratios of the area of the proton of the imine (A_imine) and the area of the peak of the proton of the pyranose ring (A_H-2). The antimicrobial activities were determined against bacterial and fungal strains, as well as multiple drug-resistant (MDR) bacteria. The chitosan Schiff base was also tagged with medicinal plants, for example, Curcuma longa, Peganum harmala, Lepidium sativam, and cruciferous vegetables, and the biological activities determined against pathogenic bacterial and fungal strains. The chitosan Schiff base showed maximum zone of inhibition of 22 mm against Staphylococcus aureus with a minimum zone of inhibition of 15 mm against Bacillus cereus. The chitosan Schiff base was fused with C longa, isothiocyanates and a combined mixture of P harmala and L sativam that has shown activities against Escherichia coli with a zone of inhibition of 28, 24, and 30 mm, respectively. The Schiff base of chitosan fused with medicinal plants also showed significant inhibitory activities against MDR bacteria.     

RALBA: a computation-aware load balancing scheduler for cloud computing

Cloud computing serves as a platform for remote users to utilize the heterogeneous resources in data-centers to compute High-Performance Computing jobs. The physical resources are virtualized in Cloud to entertain user services employing Virtual Machines (VMs). Job scheduling is deemed as a quintessential part of Cloud and efficient utilization of VMs by Cloud Service Providers demands an optimal job scheduling heuristic. An ideal scheduling heuristic should be efficient, fair, and starvation-free to produce a reduced makespan with improved resource utilization. However, static heuristics often lead to inefficient and poor resource utilization in the Cloud. An idle and underutilized host machine in Cloud still consumes up to 70% of the energy required by an active machine (Ray, in Indian J Comput Sci Eng 1(4):333–339, 2012). Consequently, it demands a load-balanced distribution of workload to achieve optimal resource utilization in Cloud. Existing Cloud scheduling heuristics such as Min–Min, Max–Min, and Sufferage distribute workloads among VMs based on minimum job completion time that ultimately causes a load imbalance. In this paper, a novel Resource-Aware Load Balancing Algorithm (RALBA) is presented to ensure a balanced distribution of workload based on computation capabilities of VMs. The RABLA framework comprises of two phases: (1) scheduling based on computing capabilities of VMs, and (2) the VM with earliest finish time is selected for jobs mapping. The outcomes of the RALBA have revealed that it provides substantial improvement against traditional heuristics regarding makespan, resource utilization, and throughput.     

Lanthanide complexes of some macrocyclic schiff bases derived from pyridine-2,6-dicarboxaldehyde α,ω-primary diamines

The synthesis of macrocyclic lanthanide complexes via the reaction of pyridine-2,6-dicarboxaldehyde with 1,2-diaminoethane, 1,2-diaminopropane and 1,3-diaminopropane in the presence of lanthanide nitrates as templating agents is discussed together with the use of the lanthanum derivatives in transmetallation reactions with copper(II).