Thapar University

About: Thapar University is a education organization based out in Patiāla, Punjab, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Cloud computing & Fuzzy logic. The organization has 2944 authors who have published 8558 publications receiving 130392 citations.

Differential expression of metallothioneins in response to heavy metals and their involvement in metal tolerance in the symbiotic basidiomycete Laccaria bicolor.

Abstract: Cysteine-rich peptides such as metallothioneins (MTs) are involved in metal homeostasis and detoxification in many eukaryotes. We report the characterization and expression of two MT genes, LbMT1 and LbMT2 from the ectomycorrhizal fungus Laccaria bicolor under metal stress conditions. LbMT1 and LbMT2 differ with respect to the length of the encoded peptides (58 versus 37 aa, respectively) and also by their expression patterns in response to metals. The expression levels of both LbMT1 and LbMT2 increased as a function of increased external Cu concentration, the expression levels for LbMT2 were always significantly higher compared with those of LbMT1. Only LbMT1, but not LbMT2, responded to Cd supply in the range of 25–100 µM while Zn did not affect the transcription of either LbMT1 or LbMT2. Both genes also responded to oxidative stress, but to a lesser extent compared to their responses to either Cu or Cd stress. Heterologous complementation assays in metal-sensitive yeast mutants indicated that both LbMT1 and LbMT2 encode peptides capable of conferring higher tolerance to both Cu and Cd. The present study identified LbMTs as potential determinants of the response of this mycorrhizal fungus to Cu and Cd stress.

Influence of Particle-Size Distribution and Temperature on Rheological Behavior of Coal Slurry

Abstract: The rheological behavior of coal-water slurry of Indian coal is studied using rheometer. The effect of particle size, solid concentration, and temperature on the rheology of the coal-water slurry has been investigated. The settlement analysis of various size ranges of coal particles has been carried out. A particle size less than 75 µm is used for analysis of rheological behavior of coal slurry and it is found that the increase in solid concentration caused the increase in apparent viscosity of the coal-water mixture. Also, it is observed that as the solid concentration increases the coal-water mixture converts to a non-Newtonian fluid. The rheological behavior of the slurry is also analyzed by blending the coal samples with mixture of coarse and fine particles, hence making a bimodal particle-size distribution. The slurry having the bimodal particle-size distribution is prepared by blending the fine particles of 53–75 µm with the coarse particles of 106–150 µm or 150–250 µm with various proportions. The ...

Grey Wolf Algorithm-Based Clustering Technique

Abstract: Abstract The main problem of classical clustering technique is that it is easily trapped in the local optima. An attempt has been made to solve this problem by proposing the grey wolf algorithm (GWA)-based clustering technique, called GWA clustering (GWAC), through this paper. The search capability of GWA is used to search the optimal cluster centers in the given feature space. The agent representation is used to encode the centers of clusters. The proposed GWAC technique is tested on both artificial and real-life data sets and compared to six well-known metaheuristic-based clustering techniques. The computational results are encouraging and demonstrate that GWAC provides better values in terms of precision, recall, G-measure, and intracluster distances. GWAC is further applied for gene expression data set and its performance is compared to other techniques. Experimental results reveal the efficiency of the GWAC over other techniques.