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Food is becoming more and more scarce due to several negative factors. People only focus on the readily available foods in their vicinity that are limited and well-known. Unexplored foods from the forest are out of our food baskets due to a metallic lifestyle that creates a lot of health problems and retards the development of a nation. From the forest’s wealth, plants are more known, but edible insects, snails, fish, and other such species are less known and need to be explored. Keeping this in view, an attempt has been made to find medicinal foods from the faunal wealth of Odisha. A survey was carried out in selected districts (Sundargarh, Mayurbhanj, Cuttack, and Keonjhar) of Odisha state in 2023 and enumerated the species from the faunal wealth having food and medicinal values. Results revealed that snails are most common and consumed as a nutraceutical and have fewer scientifically known taxa in medico-food aspects. In this communication, the food and medicinal uses of Filopaludina bengalensis, a freshwater snail, are discussed, and further advanced work is recommended to do value addition for sustainable utilization.

Insecticides are widely used in agriculture, horticulture, medicine, and industry, as well as domestically. Increased insecticide application has been attributed to higher agricultural productivity and lower infield and postharvest crop loss in the twentieth century. Malathion is a very commonly used organophosphorus (OP) insecticide applied in over 100 food crops in agriculture and post-harvest storage. Different species of Aspergillus have shown their efficiency to degrade OP chemicals. A malathion tolerant Aspergillus niger MRU01, developed by prolonged malathion exposure, was tested for its efficiency to remove malathion as well as three other commonly used OP insecticides, viz., parathion, chlorpyrifos and dimethoate. The tolerant strain showed growth efficiency as well enhanced production of phosphatases and esterase enzyme as compared to untreated as well as treated wild type (A. niger MTCC16404). The removal of malathion was 29% and 68%, in the wild type and the tolerant strain, respectively during five days. The tolerant strain was also able to remove dimethoate (63%) and chlorpyrifos (54%) with high efficiency while a low rate of removal of parathion (33%) was observed. The strain can be applied in field for bioremediation.

Cassytha filiformis L. is a medicinal parasitic plant belonging to the family Lauraceae. This plant shows a wider distribution in India. The species is a vine resembling the common parasitic dodder, the Cuscuta spp. It grows irrespective of the choice of host plant species. The host may be herbs, shrubs, woody trees and sometimes shows attachment to itself (auto parasitism) as it does to its host. Cassytha filiformis is used in various formulations in Ayurveda and folk medicines to treat malaria, urinary problems, nephritis, headache, hepatitis, piles, sinusitis, etc. It is also a rich source of phytochemical constituents such as aporphine alkaloids, tannins, saponins, and leucanthocyanins, etc. with therapeutic potential against diverse health problems. Keeping the importance of this parasitic plant, authors discussed here the uses and its pathogenicity to the host plants. &nbsp

BACKGROUND: Microbial degradation of organophosphorus (OP) insecticides has emerged as an efficient and cost‐effective technology for removal of pesticide residues from soil. Malathion‐tolerant Aspergillus (Aspergillus niger MRU01) was developed, mass cultured, harvested, mixed with coir pith at 3% on dry weight basis, shade‐dried aseptically to a 5% moisture level and stored for 60 days. The growth, metabolic activity and insecticide removal efficiencies of the preparation were evaluated at 15‐day intervals. RESULTS: No significant change in the growth performance was observed up to 45 days of storage, after which viability decreased. The activities of carbohydrate enzymes (cellulase, invertase and amylase) and protein and carbohydrate contents of the preparation, however, did not significantly change during the experimental period. The preparation showed accelerated activities of esterases and phosphatases after treatment with malathion (500 μmol L⁻¹), parathion (470 μmol L⁻¹), chlorpyrifos (260 μmol L⁻¹) and dimethoate (680 μmol L⁻¹). The highest activity of the esterase and phosphatase enzymes was observed with malathion and the minimum with parathion treatment. Nearly 70% of the applied malathion was removed from the medium by the preparation during 5 days of incubation followed by dimethoate (68%), chlorpyrifos (58%) and parathion (54%). CONCLUSIONS: The fungal preparation was highly effective in removing malathion as well as the other three OP insecticides. A storage period of 45 days may be considered ideal for maintaining the preparation in the active state, and is recommended for field application after evaluating its efficacy under field conditions. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry

The construction of functionalizable branched DNA (bDNA) relies on the designing of oligonucleotides and exploitation of their complementary chemistries. The stability of these structures largely depends on the hybridization specificity of the contributing oligonucleotides. However, most of the bDNA structures are not found suitable for in vivo application due to poor yield owing to uncharacterized hybridization efficiency and instability in biological fluids. In this report, our group has explored a mechanistic way for studying the hybridization pathway of genomic sequence derived oligonucleotides that are self-assembled to fabricate robust bDNA structures. The effect of change in nucleotide sequences on bDNA stability was studied by taking oligonucleotides derived from primers of different genes. Additionally, the stability of the bDNA in solutions with different pH, salts, and DNaseI which mimics physiological environment was reported. It was found that genomic sequence derived oligonucleotides self-assembled in a cooperative manner to yield the designed bDNAs, which are stable in physiological environment.

Being sessile, plants produce an array of secondary metabolites in response to different biotic and abiotic stimuli to survive under adverse conditions. Many of these secondary metabolites are valued for their medicinal properties and are known for their usage to cure diseases since ancient time. Even after the discoveries of synthetic drugs, the interest for drugs derived from medicinal plants is gaining importance as they are safe and devoid of any side effects. A number of important medicinal plants are yet to be cultivated for commercial purposes and are collected from wild habitat, posing a threat to their existence. To protect the biodiversity and achieve the sustainability, development of alternative strategies for production of secondary metabolites is necessary. Plant cell, tissue and organ culture including hairy root cultures have shown great potential for production of secondary metabolites. However, sometimes, these cultures fail to synthesise adequate secondary metabolites compared to plants growing under natural condition. The production of secondary metabolites can be enhanced by using different elicitors, either biotic or abiotic, which act as stress agents and enhance the production of secondary metabolites in plant callus/cell suspension culture, root culture, shoot culture and hairy root culture. Fungal elicitor (including yeast extract) is one of the preferred elicitors used for this purpose. In this chapter, attempts have been made to provide a comprehensive account of the strategies used for increasing the production of secondary metabolites in different in vitro culture system using fungal elicitors. A brief account of elicitors, elicitations and general mechanism of elicitations has also been provided.

The use of insecticides in the last decades has led to serious environmental pollution and residual toxicity to soil organisms. These insecticides are persistent in the environment and have potential toxic effects. Removing these organopollutants from soil in an ecologically responsible, safe and cost-effective way is a top concern. Among various methods available, bioremediation using microorganisms is a potential approach. Ligninolytic, white-rot fungi (WRF) produce extracellular enzyme with low substrate specificity, which makes them suitable candidates for degradation of different compounds notably organopollutants. Keeping this in context, the following work attempts to present an overview of different WRF being used in degradation of insecticides, their enzyme systems responsible for degradation and pathways of degradation. The common microbes used for the study are bacteria and many strains are recommended for the application but degradation ability of fungi is not given proper attention. Several WRF belonging to basidiomycetes and some to ascomycetes have been found with ability to degrade insecticides and herbicides. The ability to form spore during unfavourable condition makes them a better organism as compared to bacteria as they are more persistent. This article mainly focuses on the use of white-rot fungi for biodegradation of insecticides.

Solvent extracts of Diospyros melanoxylon bark were screened for antioxidant activity by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picryl hydrazyl, metal chelating, 2,2’-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) (ABTS), educing assay, total phenol, total ascorbic acid and total antioxidant capacity. All four solvents (acetone, ethanol, methanol and aqueous) showed significant antioxidant properties. Quantitative phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of high phenol content. Chromatographic separation of solvent extract is undertaken using n-butanol: acetic acid: water as the most appropriate system in the ratio of 4:1:1. The antibacterial bioautography screening of the TLC fractionated extract displayed positive inhibition against Bacillus subtilis (MTCC 7461) whereas DPPH scavenging activity of TLC fraction exhibited 17.53 % scavenging activity at 40 µl concentration. HPLC analysis of methanol extract displayed two peaks at 2.017 and 2.507 min retention time that indicated presence of more than one compounds in the said solvent extract. The bioactive compounds present in the methanol extract of D. melanoxylon bark can be further fractioned and characterized for their potential application in drug delivery and pharmaceutical industries.

In vitro antibacterial activities of acetone, ethanol, methanol and water extracts of leaves and bark of Croton roxburghii L. studied against ten human pathogenic bacterial strains showed significantly higher activity in acetone extract and least activity in case of aqueous. Minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of all extracts ranged between 0.62 and 10 mg/ml, while minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) values ranged from 1.25 to values greater than 10 mg/ml. The antioxidant assays viz. DPPH, hydrogen peroxide scavenging, iron reducing and iron chelating assays along with total phenol and ascorbic acid content were carried out with aqueous extracts of leaves and bark. While the total phenol contents in leaves and bark extracts were 0.766 ± 0.014 and 0.735 ± 0.028% respectively their ascorbic acid contents were found to be 0.252 ± 0.019 and 0.431 ± 0.013% respectively. DPPH activities in both (leaves and bark) extracts increased with the increase in concentrations. Iron chelating capacity of leaves extract is significantly higher than that of the bark. Leaves extract showed an increase in percentage of scavenging property with the increase in concentrations. Plant extracts showed low amount of iron reducing property at all concentrations. Hydrogen peroxide scavenging properties of bark was low than that of the leaves.