Fatty acid composition of canola (Brassica napus L.), as affected by agronomical,genotypic and environmental parameters

Vegetable oils with a high relative amount of unsaturated fatty acids are of great significance for human health. There is not any data on the effects of tillage practices on fatty acid composition of canola (Brassica napus L.). Hence, in a 2-year split plot experiment, the effects of different tillage systems (no (NT), minimum (MT) and conventional tillage (CT)), canola genotypes (Hyola 401 (V1) and PF (V2)) and sowing dates (including Sep. 8, 23 and Oct. 7) on the fatty acid composition of canola were evaluated. Tillage practices and the combination of canola genotypes and sowing dates were randomized to the main and sub-plots, respectively. The highest oleic acid content was the result of combining NT, V1 and Sep. 23, and the lowest was related to the combination of CT, V2 and Oct. 7. While the combination of NT, V1 and D1 resulted in the highest amount of unsaturated fatty acids, this amount was the lowest for the combination of CT, V2 and Sep. 23. For the selection of an appropriate canola producing strategy, all these parameters must be taken into account. The combination of NT, V1 and Sep. 23 may be the most favorable cropping strategy for canola production under a Mediterranean climate.     

Bioprocess engineering of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Echium italicum</Emphasis> L.: induction of shikonin and alkannin derivatives by two-liquid-phase suspension cultures

An in vitro cell suspension culture of Echium italicum was established and assayed for the production of shikonin and alkannin derivatives. Callus tissues were induced from cotyledon explants of the plant incubated onto the solidified B5 medium. A two-liquid-phase system suspension culture was then established to elicit pigments of shikonin and alkannin derivatives using liquid paraffin. The presence of liquid paraffin efficiently induced production of pigments in cultured cells. The production and/or accumulation of these compounds in the E. italicum cells was examined using fluorescence microscopy as the naphthoquinone molecules display autofluorescent properties. Phytochemical analysis of the n-hexane extract of the medium was also carried out using preparative HPLC. The chemical structure of shikonin and alkannin derivatives were characterized by UV, 1H-NMR, and 13C-NMR techniques. Based on our findings, this bioprocess engineering approach resulted in induction of shikonin and alkannin derivatives, whereupon it may be recruited for production of these important secondary metabolites.     

Error minimization explains the codon usage of highly expressed genes in Escherichia coli

Different organisms use synonymous codons with different preferences. Several measures have been introduced to compute the extent of codon usage bias within a gene or genome, among which the codon adaptation index (CAI) has been shown to be well correlated with mRNA levels of Escherichia coli. In this work an error adaptation index (eAI) is introduced, which estimates the level at which a gene can tolerate the effects of mistranslations. It is shown that the eAI has a strong correlation with CAI, as well as with mRNA levels, which suggests that the codons of highly expressed genes are selected so that mistranslation would have the minimum possible effect on the structure and function of the related proteins.     

An optimum algorithm in pathological voice quality assessment using wavelet-packet-based features,linear discriminant analysis and support vector machine

Voice impairments, attention to increased unhealthy social behavior and voice abuse, have been increasing dramatically. Therefore, diagnosis of voice diseases has an important role in the opportune treatment of pathologic voices. This paper presents an extensive study in identification of different voice disorders which their origin is in the vocal folds. Firstly, a qualitative study is applied based on short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and continuous wavelet transform (CWT) in order to investigate their aptitude in the presentation of discriminative features to identify disordered voices from normal ones. Therefore, wavelet packet transform (WPT) for their ability to analyze scrutinizingly a signal at several levels of resolution is chosen as strong speech signal parameterization method. The ability of energy and entropy features, obtained from the coefficients in the output nodes of the optimum wavelet packet tree, is investigated. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and principal component analysis (PCA) are evaluated as feature dimension reduction methods in order to optimize recognition algorithm. The performance of each structure is evaluated in terms of the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating curve (AUC). Eventually, entropy features in the sixth level of WPT decomposition along with feature dimension reduction by LDA and a support vector machine-based classification method is the most optimum algorithm that leads to the recognition rate of 100% and AUC of 100%. Proposed system clearly outperforms previous works in both respect of accuracy and reduction of residues; which may lead in full accuracy and high speed diagnosis procedure.     

Novel water-soluble polyurethane nanomicelles for cancer chemotherapy: physicochemical characterization and cellular activities

Background  

Efficient delivery of anticancer chemotherapies such as paclitaxel (PTX) can improve treatment strategy in a variety of tumors such as breast and ovarian cancers. Accordingly, researches on polymeric nanomicelles continue to find suitable delivery systems. However, due to biocompatibility concerns, a few micellar nanoformulations have exquisitely been translated into clinical uses. Here, we report the synthesis of novel water-soluble nanomicelles using bioactive polyurethane (PU) polymer and efficient delivery of PTX in the human breast cancer MCF-7 cells.     

Contamination level and human health hazard assessment of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in street dust deposited in Mahshahr,southwest of Iran

Mahshahr has a strategic position and is considered as industrial hub of Iran. Selected heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) contamination and health risk, and the mineralogical composition of street dust from Mahshahr were investigated. Results indicated that geology is the main determinant of the dust mineralogical composition. Calculated enrichment factor (EF) and principal component analysis (PCA) showed that Pb, Hg, Zn, and Cu accumulations are greatly influenced by anthropogenic sources including traffic and industry. High heavy metals content poses great ecological risk in the study area and exposure doses revealed that ingestion is the main exposure route to street dust, especially for children in residential/commercial areas. It was found that the total amount of PAHs (∑PAHs) varies from 161 to 1996 µg/kg, dominated by four-ring PAHs. Diagnostic ratios and PCA showed that both petrogenic and pyrogenic sources of PAHs in Mahshahr street dust and traffic play important roles in this respect. Furthermore, toxic equivalents and incremental lifetime cancer risk of PAHs in street dust indicated a high potential carcinogenic risk for inhabitants mainly via dermal contact and ingestion pathways particularly for outdoor workers in industrial use scenario. Finally, distribution maps of total hazard index of heavy metals and cancer risk of PAHs indicated the most impacted zones for different groups and use scenarios.