Milk-Derived Antimicrobial Peptides: Overview,Applications, and Future Perspectives

Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins - The growing consumer awareness towards healthy and safe food has reformed food processing strategies. Nowadays, food processors are aiming at natural,...     

Postnatal developmental expression and localization of apelin and apelin receptor protein in the ovary and uterus of mice

Postnatal ovarian and uterine development is crucial to accomplished female fertility. Thus, the investigations of factors that present in pre-pubertal stages are important as it might be responsible for the regulation of ovarian and uterine function. Apelin, an adipokine and its receptor (APJ) are present in female reproductive organs. However, no study has reported its postnatal expression in uterus and ovary. Thus, we investigated the postnatal developmental changes in expression and localization of apelin and APJ in the ovary and uterus of mice. Postnatal ovary and uterus were collected from postnatal day (PND) 1, 7, 14, 21, 42, 65 and performed western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry. Uterine APJ is elevated in PND14 and PND65, whereas, ovarian APJ elevated in PND7, PND14, and PND65. Apelin expression in both ovary and uterus showed intense staining at PND65 and PND14. Our results showed that apelin and APJ abundance was lower at PND21 in uterus and ovary. In conclusion, apelin and APJ are developmentally regulated in the ovary and uterus, and its localization in the different compartments of ovary and uterus suggest its distribution specific physiological role in the uterus and ovary.     

Quantum-chemical studies on thermodynamic feasibility of 1-methyl-2,4,5-trinitroimidazole processes

1-Methyl-2,4,5-trinitro imidazole (MTNI) is a well-known melt cast explosive possessing good thermal stability and impact insensitivity. MTNI has been synthesized from multi-step nitration followed by methylation of imidazole exhibiting low yield. It is desirable to screen the process thermodynamically for evaluating feasibility of the process. In the present investigations, B3LYP method in combination with 3-21G** basis set has been chosen to evaluate the enthalpy of formation for reaction species by designing reasonable isodesmic reactions. Thermodynamic feasibility of the processes has been worked out assuming free energies of reactions as derived from standard enthalpy and entropy of the reaction species. All possible synthesis routes for the target molecule, MTNI has been conceptualized from different precursors/intermediates viz. imidazole, 2-nitroimidazole, 4-nitroimidazole, 1-methyl imidazole and 2,4,5-triiodoimidazole. Various nitrating agents have been employed and their effect studied for deciding the feasibility of the reaction. It has been found that reaction entropy and enthalpy are favorable on usage of NO₂BF₄ as nitrating agent. The charge on nitro group (?Q_NO2) has been used for better understanding of the reactivity of substrates/intermediates. Overall, the study helped in screening several possible routes for MTNI synthesis and identified the thermodynamically feasible process by using NO₂BF₄ as nitrating agent.     

Modeling spatiotemporal dynamics of vole populations in Europe and America

The mathematical models proposed and studied in the present paper provide a unified framework to understand complex dynamical patterns in vole populations in Europe and North America. We have extended the well-known model provided by Hanski and Turchin by incorporating the diffusion term and spatial heterogeneity and performed several mathematical and numerical analyses to explore the dynamics in space and time of the model. These models successfully predicted the observed rodent dynamics in these regions. An attempt has been made to bridge the gap between the field and theoretical studies carried out by Turchin and Hanski (1997) [23] and Turchin and Ellner (2000) [24]. Simulation experiments, mainly two-dimensional parameter scans, show the importance of spatial heterogeneity in order to understand the poorly understood fluctuations in population densities of voles in Fennoscandia and Northern America. This study shed new light upon the dynamics of voles in these regions. The nonlinear analysis of vole data suggests that the dynamical shift is from stability to chaos. Diffusion driven model systems predict a new type of dynamics not yet observed in the field studies of vole populations carried out so far. This has been termed as chaotic in time and regular in space (CTRS). We observed CTRS dynamics in several simulation experiments. This directs us to expect that dynamics of this animal would be de-correlated in time and simultaneously mass extinctions might be possible at many spatial locations.