Zoonosis: An Emerging Link to Antibiotic Resistance Under “One Health Approach”

Current scenario in communicable diseases has generated new era that identifies the “One health” approach to understand the sharing and management of etiological agents with its impact on ecosystem. Under this context the relevance of zoonotic diseases generates major concern. The indiscriminate and higher use of antibiotics in animal husbandry creates substantial pressure on the gut microbiome for development of resistance due to shorter generation time and high density. Thus, gut works as a bioreactor for the breeding of ARBs in this scenario and are continuously released in different niches. These ARBs transfer resistance genes among native flora through horizontal gene transfer events, vectors and quorum sensing. About 60% of infectious diseases in human are caused by zoonotic pathogens have potential to carry ARGs which could be transmitted to humans. The well documented zoonotic diseases are anthrax cause by Bacillus anthracis, bovine tuberculosis by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, brucellosis by Brucella abortus, and hemorrhagic colitis by Escherichia coli. Similarly, most of the antibiotics are not completely metabolized and released in unmetabolized forms which enters the food chain and affect various ecological niches through bioaccumulation. The persistence period of antibiotics ranges from?<?1 to 3466 days in environment. The consequences of misusing the antibiotic in livestock and their fate in various ecological niches have been discussed in this review. Further the light sheds on antibiotics persistence and it biodegradation through different abiotic and biotic approaches in environment. The knowledge on personnel hygiene and strong surveillance system for zoonotic disease including ARBs transmission, prevention and control measures should be established to regulate the spread of AMR in the environment and subsequently to the human being through a food web.

     

Antioxidant Composition of Red and Orange Cultivars of Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicon L): A Comparative Evaluation

Fourteen commercial cultivars of tomato were analyzed for their antioxidant composition. There was significant difference (p<0.05) in lycopene and phenolic contents between red and yellow cultivars. Red cultivars had higher lycopene content (2.735 to 6.552 mg 100g^?1) than yellow cultivars (0.769 to 1.238 mg 100g^?1). Mean total polyphenolic content and total antioxidant activity in red cultivars was also higher than those in yellow cultivars. Overall cherry tomatoes had highest phenolic content and appeared to be a promising cultivar in terms of their health promoting effects. The results highlight an existing unexploited variability in yellow tomato to improve their antioxidant properties.     

The Nexus of Carbon,Nitrogen, and Biodiversity Impacts from Urban Metabolism

Methodology is developed for linking the urban metabolism (UM) to global environmental stresses on the carbon (C) cycle, nitrogen (N) cycle, and biodiversity loss. UM variables are systematically mapped to the drivers of carbon, nitrogen, and biodiversity impacts. Change in mean species abundance is used as metric of biodiversity loss, by adopting the dose‐response relationships from the GLOBIO model. The main biodiversity drivers related to UM included here are land‐use change (LUC) and atmospheric N deposition. The methodology is demonstrated by studying the nexus for Shanghai in 2006, based on energy and soybean consumption. Results for Shanghai show a strong nexus between C, N, and biodiversity impact due to electricity consumption and energy used in manufacturing industries and construction. Prioritization of the shift away from coal energy will therefore lead to lowering the urban growth impact on all three dimensions. Road transportation, domestic aviation, and the metal industry impact only the C footprint highly, whereas district energy impacts only biodiversity loss highly, showing a weak nexus. Among the global impacts of soybean consumption in Shanghai on biodiversity loss (due to LUC only), the highest impact occurs in Uruguay (0.52%) followed by Brazil (0.05%) and Argentina (0.02%). The local impact on biodiversity loss (i.e., within China) of soybean consumption in Shanghai is 1.03%. However, the methodology and results are limited due to the partial inclusion of drivers, a carbon footprint based on carbon dioxide emissions only, and limitations of biodiversity loss models. Potential to overcome methodological limitations is discussed.     

Initiation of Antiviral B Cell Immunity Relies on Innate Signals from Spatially Positioned NKT Cells

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Development of an Ointment Formulation Using Hot-Melt Extrusion Technology

Ointments are generally prepared either by fusion or by levigation methods. The current study proposes the use of hot-melt extrusion (HME) processing for the preparation of a polyethylene glycol base ointment. Lidocaine was used as a model drug. A modified screw design was used in this process, and parameters such as feeding rate, barrel temperature, and screw speed were optimized to obtain a uniform product. The product characteristics were compared with an ointment of similar composition prepared by conventional fusion method. The rheological properties, drug release profile, and texture characteristics of the hot-melt extruded product were similar to the conventionally prepared product. This study demonstrates a novel application of the hot-melt extrusion process in the manufacturing of topical semi-solids.     

Polysome shift assay for direct measurement of miRNA inhibition by anti-miRNA drugs

Anti-miRNA (anti-miR) oligonucleotide drugs are being developed to inhibit overactive miRNAs linked to disease. To help facilitate the transition from concept to clinic, new research tools are required. Here we report a novel method—miRNA Polysome Shift Assay (miPSA)—for direct measurement of miRNA engagement by anti-miR, which is more robust than conventional pharmacodynamics using downstream target gene derepression. The method takes advantage of size differences between active and inhibited miRNA complexes. Active miRNAs bind target mRNAs in high molecular weight polysome complexes, while inhibited miRNAs are sterically blocked by anti-miRs from forming this interaction. These two states can be assessed by fractionating tissue or cell lysates using differential ultracentrifugation through sucrose gradients. Accordingly, anti-miR treatment causes a specific shift of cognate miRNA from heavy to light density fractions. The magnitude of this shift is dose-responsive and maintains a linear relationship with downstream target gene derepression while providing a substantially higher dynamic window for aiding drug discovery. In contrast, we found that the commonly used ‘RT-interference’ approach, which assumes that inhibited miRNA is undetectable by RT-qPCR, can yield unreliable results that poorly reflect the binding stoichiometry of anti-miR to miRNA. We also demonstrate that the miPSA has additional utility in assessing anti-miR cross-reactivity with miRNAs sharing similar seed sequences.     

Effect of water table depth and tillage methods on plant-water status and yield of rice

Summary Effects of water table depths on plant-water status, and on growth and yields of two rice varieties (TOS 78 and TOS 848) were studied in a lysimetric investigation. A field study was also conducted on a hydromorphic soil to investigate the effects of fluctuating water table on rice. The leaf-water potential of TOS 78 monitored at 1300 hours at 50% flowering stage was –17.5 and –23.0 bars for 0 and 60 cm water table depths, respectively. When grown under soil moisture stress, TOS 848 maintained higher leaf-water potential (–17.5 barvs –22.5 bar) and yielded more than TOS 78. Under hydromorphic soil conditions, no-tillage treatments yielded the same as conventionally tilled plots.     

Network frailty and the geometry of herd immunity

The spread of infectious disease through communities depends fundamentally on the underlying patterns of contacts between individuals. Generally, the more contacts one individual has, the more vulnerable they are to infection during an epidemic. Thus, outbreaks disproportionately impact the most highly connected demographics. Epidemics can then lead, through immunization or removal of individuals, to sparser networks that are more resistant to future transmission of a given disease. Using several classes of contact networks-Poisson, scale-free and small-world-we characterize the structural evolution of a network due to an epidemic in terms of frailty (the degree to which highly connected individuals are more vulnerable to infection) and interference (the extent to which the epidemic cuts off connectivity among the susceptible population that remains following an epidemic). The evolution of the susceptible network over the course of an epidemic differs among the classes of networks; frailty, relative to interference, accounts for an increasing component of network evolution on networks with greater variance in contacts. The result is that immunization due to prior epidemics can provide greater community protection than random vaccination on networks with heterogeneous contact patterns, while the reverse is true for highly structured populations.