BIOE 402. Medical Technology Assessment. 2 or 3 hours. Bioentrepreneur course. Assessment of medical technology in the context of commercialization. Objectives, competition, market share, funding, pricing, manufacturing, growth, and intellectual property; many issues unique to biomedical products. Course Information: 2 undergraduate hours. 3 graduate hours. Prerequisite(s): Junior standing or above and consent of the instructor.

“Bioinformatics” 특집을 내면서

The advancements made in tissue culture techniques has made it possible to regenerate various horticultural species in vitro as micropropagation protocols for commercial scale multiplication are available for a wide range of crops. Clonal propagation and preservation of elite genotypes, selected for their superior characteristics, require high degree of genetic uniformity amongst the regenerated plants. However, plant tissue culture may generate genetic variability, i.e., somaclonal variations as a result of gene mutation or changes in epigenetic marks. The occurrence of subtle somaclonal variation is a drawback for both in vitro cloning as well as germplasm preservation. Therefore, it is of immense significance to assure the genetic uniformity of in vitro raised plants at an early stage. Several strategies have been followed to ascertain the genetic fidelity of the in vitro raised progenies comprising morpho-physiological, biochemical, cytological and DNA-based molecular markers approaches. Somaclonal variation can pose a serious problem in any micropropagation program, where it is highly desirable to produce true-to-type plant material. On the other hand, somaclonal variation has provided a new and alternative tool to the breeders for obtaining genetic variability relatively rapidly and without sophisticated technology in horticultural crops, which are either difficult to breed or have narrow genetic base. In the present paper, sources of variations induced during tissue culture cycle and strategies to ascertain and confirm genetic fidelity in a variety of in vitro raised plantlets and potential application of variants in horticultural crop improvement are reviewed.

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Somaclonal variations and their applications in horticultural crops improvement

Public genomic databases have provided new directions for molecular marker development and initiated a shift in the types of PCR-based techniques commonly used in plant science. Alongside commonly used arbitrarily amplified DNA markers, other methods have been developed. Targeted fingerprinting marker techniques are based on the well-established practices of arbitrarily amplified DNA methods, but employ novel methodological innovations such as the incorporation of gene or promoter elements in the primers. These markers provide good reproducibility and increased resolution by the concurrent incidence of dominant and co-dominant bands. Despite their promising features, these semi-random markers suffer from possible problems of collision and non-homology analogous to those found with randomly generated fingerprints. Transposable elements, present in abundance in plant genomes, may also be used to generate fingerprints. These markers provide increased genomic coverage by utilizing specific targeted sites and produce bands that mostly seem to be homologous. The biggest drawback with most of these techniques is that prior genomic information about retrotransposons is needed for primer design, prohibiting universal applications. Another class of recently developed methods exploits length polymorphism present in arrays of multi-copy gene families such as cytochrome P450 and β-tubulin genes to provide cross-species amplification and transferability. A specific class of marker makes use of common features of plant resistance genes to generate bands linked to a given phenotype, or to reveal genetic diversity. Conserved DNA-based strategies have limited genome coverage and may fail to reveal genetic diversity, while resistance genes may be under specific evolutionary selection. Markers may also be generated from functional and/or transcribed regions of the genome using different gene-targeting approaches coupled with the use of RNA information. Such techniques have the potential to generate phenotypically linked functional markers, especially when fingerprints are generated from the transcribed or expressed region of the genome. It is to be expected that these recently developed techniques will generate larger datasets, but their shortcomings should also be acknowledged and carefully investigated.

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Advances in plant gene-targeted and functional markers: a review

Members of the genus Curcuma L. have been used in traditional medicine for centuries for treating gastrointestinal disorders, pain, inflammatory conditions, wounds, and for cancer prevention and antiaging, among others. Many of the biological activities of Curcuma species can be attributed to nonvolatile curcuminoids, but these plants also produce volatile chemicals. Essential oils, in general, have shown numerous beneficial effects for health maintenance and treatment of diseases. Essential oils from Curcuma spp., particularly C. longa, have demonstrated various health-related biological activities and several essential oil companies have recently marketed Curcuma oils. This review summarizes the volatile components of various Curcuma species, the biological activities of Curcuma essential oils, and potential safety concerns of Curcuma essential oils and their components.

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Chemical Composition and Biological Activities of Essential Oils of Curcuma Species.

Microsatellites are the most popular and versatile genetic marker with myriads of applications in population genetics, conservation biology, and evolutionary biology. These are the arrays of DNA sequences, consisting of tandemly repeating mono-, di-, tri-, and tetranucleotide units, which are distributed throughout the genomes of most eukaryotic species. Microsatellites are codominant in nature, highly polymorphic, easily typed, and Mendelian inherited, all properties which make them very suitable for the study of population structure and pedigree analysis and capable of detecting differences among closely related species. PCR for microsatellites can be automated for identifying simple sequence repeat polymorphism. Small amount of blood samples or alcohol preserved tissue is adequate for analyzing them. Most of the microsatellites are noncoding, and therefore variations are independent of natural selection. These properties make microsatellites ideal genetic markers for conservation genetics and fisheries management. This review addresses the applications of microsatellite markers in conservation genetics and recent advances in population structure analysis in the context of fisheries management.

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Application of microsatellite markers in conservation genetics and fisheries management: recent advances in population structure analysis and conservation strategies.

A comparative study of essential oil profile, antibacterial and antioxidant activities of thirty Piper betle landraces towards selection of industrially important chemotypes

The anticancerous and immunomodulatory activities of Alpinia nigra essential oils and extracts were evaluated in the present study. Besides, volatile constituents of essential oils were also analys...

Anticancerous and Immunomodulatory Activities of Alpinia nigra (Gaertn.) Burtt

Objective: The present study was undertaken to evaluate the total phenolic and flavonoid content and the antioxidant property of two important seagrass species namely, Halophila ovalis and Halophila beccarii occurring in Chilika lagoon, Odisha, India. \nMethods: Total Phenolic Content (TPC) of the extracts of Halophila species was determined by Folin-Ciocalteu method with little modifications and the total flavonoid content (TFC) was measured by aluminum chloride colorimetric assay. The antioxidant activity of different extracts was investigated by DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activity. IC50 values were calculated for the DPPH and ABTS methods. \nResult: The study revealed that the methanol extract of H. ovalis has greater antioxidant activity than H. beccarii. Methanol extract of both the species (H. ovalis and H. beccarii) was found to possess high phenolic content at value of 70.25 mg GAE/g of extract and 48.53 mg GAE/g of extract respectively. Similarly flavonoid contents was found highest in methanol extract for both H. ovalis (76.82 mg quercetin equivalent/ g of extract) and H. beccarii (64.28 mg quercetin equivalent/ g of extract). The antioxidant activity of different extracts of these two species were evaluated using DPPH and ABTS radical assay. The methanol extract of both H. ovalis and H. beccarii showed high radical scavenging activity with IC50 values of 37.77 μg/ml and 52.25 μg/ml for DPPH and 25.62 μg/ml and 45.45 μg/ml for ABTS respectively. \nConclusion: The study revealed the potential of the Halophila species as natural sources of antioxidants having considerable commercial importance.

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Antioxidant activity of halophila ovalis and halophila beccarii (hydrocharitaceae): two important seagrass species of chilika lagoon, india

Callus cultures were initiated from shoot base explants of turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) on Murashige and skoog (MS) media supplemented with 2 mg/l 2, 4-dichlorophenoxy acetic acid. Plantlets were regenerated from 90 days old calli on MS media supplemented with 3 mg/l benzyl adenine. Regenerated plants were subsequently transferred to the field. 24 regenerants were analyzed for possible occurrence of somaclonal variation through cytophotometric estimation of 4C nuclear DNA content, analysis of essential oil content and molecular characterization. Significant variation was observed in 4C nuclear DNA content with mean value 8.82 pg and 8.33 pg in 2 regenerants. Analysis of essential oil of 3 regenerants showed significant variation with mean value (0.93 %, 0.73 %, 0.8 %) respectively when compared with the mean oil content 0.48 % of source plant. Inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) based DNA fingerprinting could also detect variation in regenerants with polymorphism in banding pattern as compared to control. These somaclonal variations detected in callus derived regenerants have enough significance for producing improved varieties of turmeric.

Nuclear DNA, DNA finger printing and essential oil content variation in callus derived regenerants of Curcuma longa L.

Thermal desorption modulation based detection of volatile constituents of Alpinia galanga by two dimensional gas chromatography and time of flight mass spectrometry.

Basudeba Kar

Papers

A comparative study of essential oil profile, antibacterial and antioxidant activities of thirty Piper betle landraces towards selection of industrially important chemotypes

Anticancerous and Immunomodulatory Activities of Alpinia nigra (Gaertn.) Burtt

Antioxidant activity of halophila ovalis and halophila beccarii (hydrocharitaceae): two important seagrass species of chilika lagoon, india

Nuclear DNA, DNA finger printing and essential oil content variation in callus derived regenerants of Curcuma longa L.

Thermal desorption modulation based detection of volatile constituents of Alpinia galanga by two dimensional gas chromatography and time of flight mass spectrometry.