1
Indian Journal of Biotechnology
http://www. niscair.res.in
VOLUME7CODEN: IJBNAR 7(1) (2008) 1-150 / NUMBER1 / JANUARY2008
ISSN: 0972-5849
CONTENTS
ReviewsBiodegradation of polyethylene and polypropylene / 9
J Arutchelvi, M Sudhakar, Ambika Arkatkar, Mukesh Doble, Sumit Bhaduri & Parasu Veera Uppara
Forensics for tracing microbial signatures: Biodefence perspective and preparedness for the unforeseen / 23
Priyabrata Pattnaik & Krisnamurthy Sekhar
Nutrigenomics: Looking to DNA for nutrition advice / 32
Anjana Munshi & V Shanti Duvvuri
Papers
Validation of a single tube fluorescent multiplex assay for simultaneous typing of 20 Y-STR loci / 41
Sanghamitra Sahoo & V K Kashyap
Prokaryotic expression of a 750 bp capsid region of bovine immunodeficiency virus gag gene and development of a recombinant capsid (p26) protein based immunoassay for seroprevalence studies / 50
Sandeep Bhatia, S S Patil, Richa Sood, Renu Dubey, Ashok K Bhatia, B Pattnaik & H K Pradhan
PCR detection of densonucleosis virus isolates in silkworm (Bombyx mori) from India and their nucleotide variability / 56
A K Awasthi, A R Pradeep, P P Srivastava, K Vijayan, Vineet Kumar &
S Raje Urs
Evaluation of α- and β-glucosidase inhibitory properties of macro-algae using intestinal extracts of marine snail, Thais rudolphi (Lamarck, 1822) / 61
V S Pramitha, A P Lipton & M Thangaraj
Cloning and characterization of the gene encoding HMG CoA reductase from black night shade (Solanum nigrum L.) / 66
Smitha Jose, D Girija & P S Beena
A preliminary study of smelling agents using electrical potential oscillations at liquid-liquid interface / 73U Roy, R Shalini, S V Vanitha, S K Saha & R C Srivastava
Kinetics studies on ethanol production from banana peel waste using mutant strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae / 83
K Manikandan, V Saravanan & T Viruthagiri
Effects of ammonium sulphate concentration on growth and glycerol production kinetics of two endogenic wine yeast strains / 89
S Karasu Yalçın & Z Y Özbaş
Optical resolution of (R, S)-ibuprofen in organic solvent by porcine pancreatic lipase catalyzed enantioselective esterification / 94
Ganesh Ramachandran & Laxmi Ananthanarayan
Areca husk: An inexpensive substrate for citric acid production by Aspergillus niger under solid state fermentation / 99
G Narayanamurthy, Y L Ramachandra, S Padmalatha Rai, Y N Manohara &
B T Kavitha
Genetic variability in production performance of Murrah buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis) using microsatellite polymorphism / 103
P Sikka & R K Sethi
Genetic diversity in Kheri — A pastoralists developed Indian sheep using microsatellite markers / 108
S Bhatia & R Arora
Analysis of microsatellite markers in Ongole breed of cattle / 113
S M K Karthickeyan, P Kumarasamy, S N Sivaselvam, R Saravanan & P Thangaraju
Antibacterial activity and characterization of bacteriocin of Bacillus mycoides isolated from whey / 117
Nivedita Sharma & Neha Gautam
Induction of hairy roots through the mediation of four strains of Agrobacterium rhizogenes on five host plants / 122
R Pratap Chandran & V P Potty
Micropropagation of Ceropegia hirsute Wt. & Arn.—A starchy tuberous asclepid / 129
T D Nikam, R S Savant & R S Pagare
Short Communications /
Comparative efficacy of different DNA extraction methods for PCR-based assay in Tectona grandis L.f. /
133
C Narayanan, Swapnil Dubey, Syed Arif Wali, Nidhi Shukla, Randhir Kumar,A K Mandal & S A Ansari /
Studies on differential growth behaviour of two alpine herbs of Western Himalaya from different altitudes under in vitro conditions /
137
Subedar Pandey, Sonia Malik, Sanjeev Sharma & Madhu Sharma /Conference Report — New Horizons in Biotechnology (NHBT-2007)
/141
Instructions to Contributors /147
7
AUTHOR INDEX
Ananthanarayan L / 94Ansari S A / 133
ArkatkarA / 9
Arora R / 108
Arutchelvi J / 9
Awasthi A K / 56
Beena P S / 66
Bhaduri S / 9
Bhatia A K / 50
Bhatia S / 108
Bhatia Sandeep / 50
Chandran R P / 122
Doble M / 9
Dubey R / 50
Dubey S / 133
Duvvuri V S / 32
Gautam N / 117
Girija D / 66
Jose S / 66
Karthickeyan S M K / 113
Kashyap V K / 41
Kavitha B T / 99
Kumarasamy P / 113
Kumar R / 133
Kumar V / 56
Lipton A P / 61
Malik S / 137
Mandal A K / 133
Manikandan K / 83
Manohara Y N / 99
Munshi A / 32
Narayanan C / 133
Narayanamurthy G / 99
Nikam T D / 129
Özbaş Z Y / 89
Pagare R S / 129
Pandey S / 137
Patil S S / 50
Pattnaik B / 50
Pattnaik P / 23
Potty V P / 122
Pradeep A R / 56
Pradhan H K / 50
Pramitha V S / 61
Rai S P / 99
Raje U S / 56
Ramachandra Y L / 99
Ramachandran G / 94
Roy U / 73
Saha S K / 73
Sahoo S / 41
Saravanan R / 113
Saravanan V / 83
Savant R S / 129
Sekhar K / 23
Sethi R K / 103
Shalini R / 73
Sharma M / 137
Sharma N / 117
Sharma S / 137
Shukla N / 133
Sikka P / 103
Sivaselvam S N / 113
Sood R / 50
Srivastava P P / 56
Srivastava R C / 73
Sudhakar M / 9
Thangaraj M / 61
Thangaraju P / 113
Uppara P V / 9
Vanitha S V / 73
Vijayan K / 56
Viruthagiri T / 83
Wali S A / 133
Yalçın S K / 89
143
Reviews
Indian Journal of Biotechnology
Vol. 7, January 2008, pp 9-22
Biodegradation of polyethylene and polypropylene
J Arutchelvi, M Sudhakar, Ambika Arkatkar, Mukesh Doble*, Sumit Bhaduri1 and Parasu Veera Uppara1
Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai 600 036, India
1Polymer Research and Technology Center, Reliance Industries Limited, Swastik Mills Compound,
Chembur, Mumbai 400 071, India
Received 26 May 2006; revised 21 February 2007; accepted 22 May 2007
Polyethylene and polypropylene are the two polyolefins with wide ranging applications. They are recalcitrant and hence remain inert to degradation and deterioration leading to their accumulation in the environment, and, therefore creating serious environmental problems. In this review, biodegradation of these two polymers under in vitro conditions is reported. An attempt has been made to cover the mechanism of biodegradation, the various bacterial and fungal organisms that have been reported for the same, methods adopted for the studies and different characterization techniques followed to measure the extent of degradation
Keywords: polyethylene, polypropylene, biodegradation, in vitro
Indian Journal of Biotechnology
Vol 7, January 2008, pp 23-31
Forensics for tracing microbial signatures: Biodefence perspective and preparedness for the unforeseen
Priyabrata Pattnaik* and Krisnamurthy Sekhar
Defence Research and Development Establishment, DRDO, Jhansi Road, Gwalior 474 002, India
Received 11 October 2006; revised 10 April 2007; accepted 21 May 2007
Biological weapons are assigned high priority in homeland security, defence, counterproliferation, nonproliferation, intelligence, and counterterrorist programmes. In order to strengthen active defense against development and use of these weapons, several comprehensive technological and forensic capabilities have been developed world over for investigative, intelligence, prosecutive, diplomatic and policy purposes. Microbial forensics is one of such strategies. It is a new discipline combining microbiology and forensic science. Microbial forensics associate the source of the causative agent with a specific individual or group by measuring molecular variations between related microbial strains. In this context, several advanced molecular techniques and practices including molecular phylogeny, whole genome sequencing, microarray analysis, DNA finger printing, etc., can be extremely valuable and effective analytical tools in a microbial forensic investigation. Results from such analyses may be related to the intentional use of microbial agents for bioterrorism or the accidental release of any offensive microorganisms or toxins of public health significance, specifically for the purpose of determining the origin. The new discipline of microbial forensics is an integration of an array of well established fields, such as microbial genomics, phylogenetics, forensic informatics and classical microbiology.
Keywords: Biological evidence, biological warfare, forensic microbiology, molecular phylogeny, molecular signature
Indian Journal of Biotechnology
Vol 7, January 2008, pp 32-40
Nutrigenomics: Looking to DNA for nutrition advice
Anjana Munshi* and V Shanti Duvvuri
Department of Genetics, Shadan P G Centre for Biosciences, Hyderabad 500 004, India
Received 19 February 2006; revised 6 March 2007; accepted 5 June 2007
With the success of ‘Human Genome Project’ and the powerful tools of molecular biology, we have entered the era of genetic nutrition. The publication of the human ‘blue print’ has triggered an explosion in pharmaceutical research to utilize this knowledge in prescription of drugs to be tailored according to the genetic make up of susceptible individuals or in other words personalized medicine. Propelled by the recent unraveling of human genome; nutritional sciences are discovering the application of the so-called “omics” sciences. This has the potential of identifying and validating targets to improve personalized nutritional health and thus serves to define the added value for the next generation of foods and the crops. The first new term to emerge in this area was “Nutrigenomics.” Today, the term nutrigenomics generally refers to the study of how dietary components interact with the genome and modify subsequent gene expression1. It is envisaged that nutrigenomics will lead to evidence-based dietary interventions for prevention of diet related common diseases.
Keywords: nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, single nucleotide polymorphism, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transgenics
Papers
Indian Journal of Biotechnology
Vol 7, January 2008, pp 41-49
Validation of a single tube fluorescent multiplex assay for simultaneous typing of 20 Y-STR loci
Sanghamitra Sahoo1, 2 and V K Kashyap1, 2*
1National DNA Analysis Centre, Central Forensic Science Laboratory, 30 Gorachand Road, Kolkata, India
Received 12 June 2006; revised 27 April 2007; accepted 23 July 2007
This paper describes a single tube assay for 20 fluorescent labelled Y-STR loci, which is rapid and robust state-of-art multiplex system. Reaction conditions, including annealing temperature, concentration of primers, magnesium and template DNA, DNA polymerase and reaction volume, were optimised to yield robust amplification. The assay could withstand moderate fluctuations in reaction parameters with no affect on haplotype analysis. Sensitivity and robustness of the multiplex system is revealed from the examination of different matrices and environmental conditions wherein complete haplotypes could be obtained in all the samples with no failures except those exposed to severe environmental stresses. Genotyping of the 20 Y-STR loci showed that all loci included in the multiplex are highly polymorphic in the Indian populations and its inclusion increases the discriminatory power of the marker system. It could be summarized that the developed Y-STR multiplex assay is a simple, sensitive and robust system highly suitable for concurrent analysis of 20 polymorphic Y-STR loci.
Keywords: multiplex PCR, Y-STR, DNA profiling, validation
Indian Journal of Biotechnology
Vol 7, October 2008, pp 50-55
Prokaryotic expression of a 750 bp capsid region of bovine immunodeficiency virus gag gene and development of a recombinant capsid (p26) protein based immunoassay for seroprevalence studies
Sandeep Bhatia1*, S S Patil2, Richa Sood1, Renu Dubey1, Ashok K Bhatia3, B Pattnaik4 and H K Pradhan1
1High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL), Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bhopal 462 021, India
2Project Directorate on Animal Disease Monitoring and Surveillance (PD-ADMAS), Indian Veterinary Research Institute Campus
Hebbal, Bangalore 560 024, India
3Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry
Mathura Campus, Mathura 281 001, India
4Project Directorate on Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Indian Veterinary Research Institute Campus
Mukteswar-Kumaon, Nainital 263 138, India
Received 17 December 2006; revised 8 March 2007; accepted 13 April 2007
A 750 bp DNA fragment of the gag gene, coding for capsid (p26) protein of bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV), was cloned in pQE32 vector and expressed as 6´ His tagged fusion protein in Escherichia coli. The concentration of affinity purified His tagged capsid protein was 5 mg/mL and its yield was 3.5 g/L of induced culture (E. coli). The recombinant capsid protein of BIV was found to be immunologically reactive with a reference positive serum. Using the purified capsid protein, an indirect ELISA was standardized to test sera of cattle and buffalo for carrying out sero-surveillance of BIV. Of 672 animals tested by capsid based ELISA, 162 were positive and 510 were negative, giving an overall prevalence of 24% in India. In conclusion, the recombinant capsid based indirect ELISA was found suitable to study BIV antibody status. To our knowledge, this is the first seroprevalence study of BIV infection in India.
Keywords: BIV, capsid, ELISA, gag, p26, seroprevalence
Indian Journal of Biotechnology
Vol 7, October 2008, pp 56-60
PCR detection of densonucleosis virus isolates in silkworm (Bombyx mori) from India and their nucleotide variability
A K Awasthi*, A R Pradeep, P P Srivastava, K Vijayan, Vineet Kumar1 and S Raje Urs
Seribiotech Research Laboratory, Central Silk Board, Carmelaram Post, Kodathi, Bangalore 560 035, India
1Central Sericultural Research and Training Institute, Central Silk Board, Srirampura, Mysore 570 008, India
Received 17 August 2006; revised 16 March 2007; accepted 19 April 2007
Densonucleosis virus (DNV) is one of the pathogenic viruses of the commercially valuable silkworm, Bombyx mori. It causes flacherie disease, mostly as combined infection with other pathogens like bacteria, which accounts for the significant loss of cocoons in sericulture. Two isolates of DNV from B. mori, DNV1 and DNV2 have been previously identified on the basis of their sequences. After infection with purified isolates of DNV in some commonly used silkworm strains, viz. Nistari, C’nichi, NB1 and Guangnnong Marked, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was conducted using DNV1 and DNV2 primers. DNV1 primers generated a distinct profile in the B. mori strains, whereas DNV2 produced single monomorphic band in all the screened strains. Sequence of one of the prominent fragments generated by the DNV1 primer exhibited very high degree of nucleotide variability from that of Japanese DNV1 isolate, but the sequence of DNV2 showed near to complete similarity. Besides, the study demonstrates that PCR technique could be used to diagnose the DNV presence/absence in silkworm strains without sacrificing the larvae and the results could be used in breeding programmes.