Viral impacts on honey bee populations: A review

Honey bee is vital for pollination and ecological services, boosting crops productivity in terms of quality and quantity and production of colony products: wax, royal jelly, bee venom, honey, pollen and propolis. Honey bees are most important plant pollinators and almost one third of diet depends on bee’s pollination, worth billions of dollars. Hence the role that honey bees have in environment and their economic importance in food production, their health is of dominant significance. Honey bees can be infected by various pathogens like: viruses, bacteria, fungi, or infested by parasitic mites. At least more than 20 viruses have been identified to infect honey bees worldwide, generally from Dicistroviridae as well as Iflaviridae families, like ABPV (Acute Bee Paralysis Virus), BQCV (Black Queen Cell Virus), KBV (Kashmir Bee Virus), SBV (Sacbrood Virus), CBPV (Chronic bee paralysis virus), SBPV (Slow Bee Paralysis Virus) along with IAPV (Israeli acute paralysis virus), and DWV (Deformed Wing Virus) are prominent and cause infections harmful for honey bee colonies health. This issue about honey bee viruses demonstrates remarkably how diverse this field is, and considerable work has to be done to get a comprehensive interpretation of the bee virology.     

Enhanced decolorization of Solar brilliant red 80 textile dye by an indigenous white rot fungus Schizophyllum commune IBL-06

An indigenously isolated white rot fungus, Schizophyllum commune IBL-06 was used to decolorize Solar brilliant red 80 direct dye in Kirk’s basal salts medium. In initial screening study, the maximum decolorization (84.8%) of Solar brilliant red 80 was achieved in 7 days shaking incubation period at pH 4.5 and 30 °C. Different physical and nutritional factors including pH, temperature and fungal inoculum density were statistically optimized through Completely Randomized Design (CRD), to enhance the efficiency of S. commune IBL-06 for maximum decolorization of Solar brilliant red 80 dye. The effects of inexpensive carbon and nitrogen sources were also investigated. Percent dye decolorization was determined by a reduction in optical density at the wavelength of maximum absorbance (λ_max, 590 nm). Under optimum conditions, the S. commune IBL-06 completely decolorized (100%) the Solar brilliant red 80 dye using maltose and ammonium sulfate as inexpensive carbon and nitrogen sources, respectively in 3 days. S. commune IBL-06 produced the three major ligninolytic enzymes lignin peroxidase (LiP), manganase peroxidase (MnP) and lacaase (Lac) during the decolorization of Solar brilliant red 80. LiP was the major enzyme (944 U/mL) secreted by S. commune IBL-06 along with comparatively lower activities of MnP and Laccase.     

Microwave induced pyrolysis of oil palm biomass

The purpose of this paper was to carry out microwave induced pyrolysis of oil palm biomass (shell and fibers) with the help of char as microwave absorber (MA). Rapid heating and yield of microwave pyrolysis products such as bio-oil, char, and gas was found to depend on the ratio of biomass to microwave absorber. Temperature profiles revealed the heating characteristics of the biomass materials which can rapidly heat-up to high temperature within seconds in presence of MA. Some characterization of pyrolysis products was also presented. The advantage of this technique includes substantial reduction in consumption of energy, time and cost in order to produce bio-oil from biomass materials. Large biomass particle size can be used directly in microwave heating, thus saving grinding as well as moisture removal cost. A synergistic effect was found in using MA with oil palm biomass.     

Cell-Shape Regulation of Smooth Muscle Cell Proliferation

Vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) play an important role in vascular remodeling. Heterogeneity and phenotypic changes in SMCs are usually accompanied by a morphological difference, i.e., elongated/spindle-like versus spread-out or epithelioid/rhomboid cell shapes. However, it is not known whether the cell shape directly regulates SMC proliferation, and what the underlying mechanisms are. In this study, microgrooves and micropatterned matrix islands were used to engineer the cell shape and investigate the associated biophysical and biological mechanisms. Compared to spread-out SMCs on nonpatterned surfaces, SMCs on micropatterned surfaces demonstrated elongated morphology, significantly lower cell and nucleus shape indexes, less spreading, a lower proliferation rate, and a similar response (but to a lesser extent) to platelet-derived growth factor, transforming growth factor-β, and mechanical stretching. DNA microarray profiling revealed a lower expression of neuron-derived orphan receptor-1 (NOR-1) in elongated SMCs. Knocking down NOR-1 suppressed DNA synthesis in SMCs, suggesting that NOR-1 is a mediator of cell elongation effects. Regulation of DNA synthesis in SMCs by the cell shape alone and a decrease in DNA synthesis in the case of small cell spreading area were achieved by micropatterning SMCs on matrix islands of different shapes and spreading areas. Changes in the cell shape also affected the nucleus shape, whereas variations in the cell spreading area modulated the nucleus volume, indicating a possible link between nucleus morphology (both shape and volume) and DNA synthesis. The findings of this investigation provide insight into cell shape effects on cell structure and proliferation, and have direct implications for vascular pathophysiology.     

Influence of ethidium bromide on hyperthermic modification of bleomycin-DNA interaction

The effect of hyperthermic treatment on the binding of 59Fe-labeled bleomycin to DNA has been studied. Enhanced binding was observed at elevated temperatures. The influence of the DNA-intercalating agent, ethidium bromide, on bleomycin-DNA interaction was also studied and revealed a considerable decrease in this interaction at ethidium bromide levels below 1 microgram/ml. Ethidium bromide was observed to remove the enhanced bleomycin-DNA interaction recorded previously following incubation at hyperthermic temperatures. Synergistic action of bleomycin and hyperthermia on loss of clonogenic ability of HT29R cells is reported. Incubation of cells under hyperthermic conditions with bleomycin in the presence of ethidium bromide removes this synergism, producing a less than additive effect for the action of bleomycin and heat after ethidium bromide effects are taken into account.     

Floristic inventory and ecological characterization the village Sherpao,District Charsadda,Khyber Pakhtunkhwa- Pakistan

Floristic inventory of village Sherpao, District Charsadda comprised of total 104 plant species belonging to 46 families and 95 genera. The leading families included Fabaceae, Asteraceae, Poaceae and contributed by 8 species one (7.69%).The most pre-dominant life form was therophytes having 35 species (33.65%). Most dominant habit of flora were herbs having 77 species (74%) followed by trees contributed by 18 species (17.30%) and shrubs having 9 species (8.65%). Leaf size spectra of the flora showed that the most dominant leaf size class were microphyll having 38 species (36.53%) followed by nanophyll contributed by 32 species (30.76%), mesophyll represented 22 species (21.15%) and leptophyll contributed by 12 species (11.53%). Based on habitat 77 species (74%) were xerophytic in nature followed by 14 species (13.46%) in wet condition and 13 species (12.5%) were present in both conditions. In 104 plant species 85 were non spiny and 19 were spiny. Plant growth and distribution are having strong correlation with environment. Therefore, it is important to understand the environmental aspects that affect plant growth and distribution.     

Evidence of genetically diverse virulent mating types of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Phytophthora capsici</Emphasis> from <Emphasis Type="Italic">Capsicum annum</Emphasis> L.

Chili pepper (Capsicum annum L.) is an important economic crop that is severely destroyed by the filamentous oomycete Phytophthora capsici. Little is known about this pathogen in key chili pepper farms in Punjab province, Pakistan. We investigated the genetic diversity of P. capsici strains using standard taxonomic and molecular tools, and characterized their colony growth patterns as well as their disease severity on chili pepper plants under the greenhouse conditions. Phylogenetic analysis based on ribosomal DNA (rDNA), β-tubulin and translation elongation factor 1α loci revealed divergent evolution in the population structure of P. capsici isolates. The mean oospore diameter of mating type A1 isolates was greater than that of mating type A2 isolates. We provide first evidence of an uneven distribution of highly virulent mating type A1 and A2 of P. capsici that are insensitive to mefenoxam, pyrimorph, dimethomorph, and azoxystrobin fungicides, and represent a risk factor that could ease outpacing the current P. capsici management strategies.     

A virus-derived short hairpin RNA confers resistance against sugarcane mosaic virus in transgenic sugarcane

RNA interference (RNAi) is commonly used to produce virus tolerant transgenic plants. The objective of the current study was to generate transgenic sugarcane plants expressing a short hairpin RNAs (shRNA) targeting the coat protein (CP) gene of sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV). Based on multiple sequence alignment, including genomic sequences of four SCMV strains, a conserved region of ~ 456 bp coat protein (CP) gene was selected as target gene and amplified through polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Subsequently, siRNAs2 and siRNA4 were engineered as stable short hairpin (shRNA) transgenes of 110 bp with stem and loop sequences derived from microRNA (sof-MIR168a; an active regulatory miRNA in sugarcane). These transgenes were cloned in independent RNAi constructs under the control of the polyubiquitin promoter. The RNAi constructs were delivered into two sugarcane cultivars ‘SPF-234 and NSG-311 in independent experiments using particle bombardment. Molecular identification through PCR and Southern blot revealed anti-SCMV positive transgenic lines. Upon mechanical inoculation of transgenic and non-transgenic sugarcane lines with SCMV, the degree of resistance was found variable among the two sugarcane cultivars. For sugarcane cultivar NSG-311, the mRNA expression of the CP–SCMV was reduced to 10% in shRNA2-transgenic lines and 80% in shRNA4-transgenic lines. In sugarcane cultivar SPF-234, the mRNA expression of the CP–SCMV was reduced to 20% in shRNA2-transgenic lines and 90% in shRNA4 transgenic lines, revealing that transgenic plants expressing shRNA4 were almost immune to SCMV infection.