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Innumerable plants have been used widely as integral medicinal sources since the start of human civilization. The demand for herbal medicines is constantly increasing with time overtime. Licorice ( Glycyrrhiza glabra family Leguminosae) is one of the most used herbal plants in foods, in medicinal forms, and substantially researched on a worldwide scale. It was used as traditional and complementary medicine against innumerable ailments including allergies, liver toxicity, gastric ulcer, lung diseases, skin disorders, oral health problems including tooth decay, and inflammation. The constituents of licorice include various essential oils, sugars, inorganic salts, resins, amino acids, and nucleic acids. Biological activity has been observed to be portrayed by active compounds of licorice including triterpene, flavonoids, and saponins. In recent years, licorice has been widely researched to discover its benefits, constituents, and its mechanism of action. The review summarizes the therapeutic and pharmacological benefits of licorice and its uses in different health-related conditions along with its toxicity and maximum levels of licorice consumption.

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Land use land cover (LULC) change has become a major concern for biodiversity, ecosystem alteration, and modifying the climatic pattern especially land surface temperature (LST). The present study assessed past and predicted future LULC and LST change in the Swabi District of Pakistan. LULC maps were generated from satellite data for years 1987, 2002, and 2017 using supervised classification. Mean LST and its areal change were estimated for different LULC classes from thermal bands of satellite images. LULC and LST were projected for the year 2047 using the integrated weighted evidence-cellular automata (WE-CA) model and a regression equation developed in this study, respectively. LULC change revealed an increase of 5% in the built-up while a decrease in the agricultural area by ~ 9%. There was an increase of ~ 63% area in the LST class ≥ 27 °C which may create urban heat island (UHI). Simulation results indicated that the built-up area will further be increased by ~ 3% until 2047. Area associated with LST class 30 °C indicated a further increase of ~ 38% till 2047 with reference to year 2017. Findings of this study suggested proper utilization of LULC in order to mitigate the creation of UHIs associated with urbanization and built-up areas.

Buckwheat is a gluten-free pseudo-cereal that is a part of the Polygonaceae family. Grain of buckwheat is a highly healthy component of food and has been found to have a broad variety of beneficial effects. It is cultivated as grain in a popular buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) which has a secondary significance in many countries. It contains certain high-level nutritionally beneficial components and can have other characteristics as functional food. Buckwheat protein is of outstanding quality and, unlike popular cereals, is rich in essential amino acid, lysine. Health benefits of this plants include reducing plasma cholesterol level, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, anti-cancer, anti-diabetic effects and enhancing hypertension symptoms. Buckwheat is also used in gluten free diet in people with celiac disease and used in the alleviation of other common disease. It has also been recognized that buckwheat has a prebiotic and antioxidant activity. The key purpose of this review article is to analyze advanced work on the health benefits of buckwheat, concentrating on the particular function of its bioactive compounds and the process by which such effects are carried out.

The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-Cas-9 (CRISPR-Cas9) system has been a revolutionising tool in the field of molecular genetics, which provides a versatile range of editing potentials. Researchers can produce breaks or alter genomes with ease using the system. Cancer is one of the multi-gene diseases whose genes need to be studied in detail. The CRISPR-Cas9 technology may also provide a promising potential in the field of cancer genetics. The current narrative review comprised 50 research articles which were keenly analysed and the applications and outcomes of CRISPR-Cas9 system in cancer genetics were comprehensively and critically discussed. It was concluded that application of the system had great potential to help understand cancer biology of various types and could be used for its genetic modelling. However, much work is still needed to be done to apply the technology for understanding the mechanism of cancers and to help in the designing of appropriate therapies.

In the wake of the recent global pandemic of COVID-19, there has been increasing concern among the general public to improve their immune system. The causative agent of COVID-19 is SARS CoV-2, similar to its relative viruses SARS Cov-1 and MERS. Although vaccines have been developed now and are in public use, still the role of a healthy immune system is crucial as new strains of the virus are being discovered and along with emergence of new strains, short and long term side effects of vaccine cannot be excluded. Plants have been used in herbal medicines and many chemicals since ancient times and extracts in them are found to boost the immune system. Therefore, a consciously maintained diet consisting of plant-based immunity boosters is the need of the hour. Plants are known to provide many chemicals, natural therapeutics and vitamins which naturally enhance our immune system. Recently, vaccination research is also being carried out in transgenic plants. In this review, main focus has been put on highlighting some of the key players within the Kingdom Plantae, which, when taken up in regular diet, can significantly boost our immune system capacity and thus helps the human body to combat this deadly virus more efficiently.