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The quinazoline nucleus is one of the most privileged scaffolds for the designing of pharmacodynamic compounds.There were several molecules originated from natural as well as synthetic sources.Molecules with quinazolinenucleus have been found not only aspotential anticancer agents butalsofor treating other diseases.In the present study, the designed compounds were subjected toin silico screening followed by molecular docking with caspase-9 protein. Initially, compounds were screened for drug-likeness usingSwissADME, Osiris Property Explorer, ProTox-II, and PASS web servers.It has been found that most of the compounds interactwith caspase-9 through H-bonding. During the preliminary screening, the compounds have shown druglikeness anddevoid of any mutagenicity and hepatotoxicity.Our results indicate that these scaffolds could be further improved for their anticancer efficacy by structural modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stress-related NAC (NAM, ATAF1-2 and CUC2) genes, known as SNAC sub-family have been identified in four different species such as Arabidopsis thaliana, Oryza sativa, Sorghum bicolor and Zea mays using the tools of bioinformatics. These genes have been characterized by finding out their introns, exons, cis-regulatory elements, sub-cellular localization, highly conserved motifs, and motif signatures. Phylogenetic tree has been constructed using protein sequences, calculated synonymous to non-synonymous substitution rates (Ka/Ks) of SNAC paralogs and generated 3-dimensional protein models. Predicted SNAC homologs in maize genome have been studied by analysing the synteny of ZmSNAC genes with NAC genes in Arabidopsis thaliana, Oryza sativa and Sorghum bicolor. miRNA binding sites have been predicted and analysis of cis-regulatory elements in the promoter regions of SNAC genes in the four plant species has been performed. Identification of SNAC transcription factor homologues in the four plant species and their comparative analysis may provide a basis for further characterization of SNAC transcription factors in various other plant species. Available data have been mined for gene expression analysis under different abiotic stress conditions which displayed up- and down-regulations indicating apparent involvement of SNAC genes during abiotic stress responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paratuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP). It affects domestic cattle, ruminant livestock species with emerging zoonotic concerns and also causes human Crohn's disease. It is a chronic granulomatous enteritis and results in huge economic loss to domestic dairy cattle and ruminant industry. Further, there is mounting evidence on the zoonotic role of MAP in human Crohn's disease. MAP is not killed by pasteurization, therefore, milk and milk products are major sources of infection for humans. The disease affects cattle and small ruminant industries, thus impacting farmer's economy. Control of the disease is hampered by the lack of rapid and accurate diagnostic tests. Therefore, it is urgently needed to develop affordable as well as high performing diagnostic tools. So, the present study was aimed to develop a simple, inexpensive, rapid and robust point of care (POC) lateral flow diagnostic test kit for serodiagnosis of paratuberculosis infection in bovine cattle and in small ruminant livestock species. We developed a rapid, pen-side lateral flow antibody (Ab) diagnostic test kit for onsite screening of paratuberculosis. The rapid kit detects infection in 20 minutes and can be used directly by a farmer without the requirement of an expert or equipment. We evaluated 2,502 samples using lateral flow assay (LFA) which included 243 reference sera and 2,259 field samples. The results suggest that the sensitivity and the specificity of LFA were 91.01% and 98.94% respectively in comparison with the gold standard culture, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) methods. Thus, LFA aids to detect the MAP specific antibodies (Ab) in the collected samples at POC resource-limited areas and help the bovine and small ruminant livestock healthcare systems. This assay is well suited for the early diagnosis of MAP in less equipped laboratories and in resourcelimited POC settings suitable for the Indian environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leptospirosis is a life threatening, emerging, infectious zoonotic disease of humans and livestock all over the world. The diagnosis of this disease is frequently ineffective. Conventional methods of diagnosis, gold standard bacterial culture and microscopic agglutination test (MAT) are being used. These tests are time-consuming and the test for the disease can be positive more than 2 weeks after the onset of the disease. Present study was taken up to circumvent the problems and disadvantages in the methods/protocols being used currently in leptospirosis diagnosis. This study aimed to develop a point of care lateral flow (LFA) and indirect ELISA assays to detect disease-specific antibodies in the whole blood/serum/plasma for the rapid diagnosis of acute infection. The Leptospira specific lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was used in combination with recombinant multi-epitope membrane protein as an antigen candidate for the detection of disease specific antibodies. The developed lateral flow (LFA) and indirect ELISA assays were compared with gold standard MAT and commercial ELISA kit. The MAT confirmed standard reference sera were used for validation of developed assays. A total of 223 positive and 115 non-positive samples for leptospirosis were used in the present validation. Indirect ELISA assay developed in the present study showed higher sensitivity and specificity of 98.65% and 100% respectively. In contrast, the sensitivity and specificity of the commercial ELISA and LFA were 96.41%, 97.39%, 87.44% and 98.26% respectively. The results obtained proved that LFA and indirect ELISA assays were more effective than the conventional methods for the diagnosis of acute leptospirosis, especially within the onset and useful for the point of care diagnosis at resourcelimited areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]