World Biotechnology Congress

Dekoko (Pisum sativum var. abyssinicum) is one of the most important food legumes grown in south Tigray and north Wollo, northern Ethiopia. It is one among the most important food legumes in terms of price and protein content. It grows alone and mixed with many cereal crops growing in north Ethiopia. This study was conducted with the objective of selecting tolerant and relatively high yielding P. sativum var. abyssinicum collections under different salt (NaCl) concentrations at laboratory conditions. The seeds of the six collections were obtained from four districts; two regional states of north Ethiopia with different attitudinal ranges 1868 m a.s.l. being the lowest and 2457 m a.s.l. the highest. The six on farm vigorously growing local collections, three from Ofla (T-001/08OF, T-002/08OF and, T-003/08OF), one from Sirinka (T-025/08Sr), one from Emba-Alaje (TA-026/15E/A), and one from Endamohoni (T-023/15MW) were studied for salt stress tolerances in controlled condition by priming in four salt treatment levels (5 dS/m, 7 dS/m, 9 dS/m, and 15 dS/m). Distilled water (0 dS/m) was used as control. Fifty (50) surface sterilized seeds per petri dish were sown for the four salt treatments and the control. Collections T-001/08 from Ofla and T-023/08 from Endamohoni showed good growth performance at 5 dS/m. However, T-025/08Sr from Sirinka and TA-026/15E/A from Emba-Alaje responded positively up to 7dS/m. At higher salinity level (9dS/m) growth features decreased with increasing salinity stress. But, T-023/15MW, T-001/08OF, T-025/08Sr followed by TA-026/15E/A from lower to the higher resistances, respectively, could withstand lower (5dS/m) to medium (7dS/m) concentrations of salinity as compared to the other collections.

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Many studies have proved that human milk is the ideal food to feed children during the first six months of life, complementing their feeding with other more complex foods up to two years. But there is the problem of those children whose mothers can’t feed them for some reason beyond their control. For this, it has begun the transformation of mother's milk in powder treated with high pressures (HP) and UV radiation, with the purpose of supplying human milk Banks in Mexico. It’s essential to know if this change allows human milk to conserve its nutritional properties, it’s also important to know if the shelf life of the product allows it to compete in quality with the big companies that make formulations of cow's milk powder for babies. The results obtained over the course of 10 weeks have shown that there is no significant loss in the protein and carbohydrates content of the spray-dried human milk powder relative to fresh human milk (p> 0.05). Microbiological analyzes performed after high pressure treatment and spray drying didn’t show growth in Standard Count, Dextrose and Macconkey agar, except in MRS agar ≤12 UFC; treated with UV radiation there were growth in Standard Count, Potato Dextrose, and MRS agar. The results allow to continue with the transformation of the human milk powder and know which treatment is the best for it conservation.

Mohammad Al sorkhy is an assistant professor of cell and computational biology, Dr Al sorkhy started his career as a cell biologist with interest in protein interactions. Then he started to shift towards computational biology to answer his major question about protein interactions.

Anti-microbial resistance(AMR) is becoming a real threat to humanity with a resistant strains emerging very frequently. The arising of antibiotics resistance is mainly attributed to the misuse of these agents, in addition to the decline in the development of new drugs by the pharmaceutical industry. The development of new novel antibiotics is an emerging necessity to counter act this serious phenomena. Bacterial histidine kinases (HKs) are one of the most promising targets for novel antibacterial drugs. They are part of the bacterial two-component systems (TCSs), the main signal transduction pathways in bacteria, regulating various processes including virulence, secretion systems and antibiotic resistance. Since mammalian histidine kinases signal transduction pathway is different than the prokaryotic one, the inhibition of those pathways could be a potential target for a novel antimicrobial agents. In this study, the druggability of histidine kinase will be assessed for several bacterial species. In this work, different histidine kinases of varies bacterial origins were assed. First we performed some extensive data mining in the protein data bank (PDB) to obtain a large library of crystal structures of histidine kinases, each one of the proteins were then prepared using the Molecular Operating Environment software (MOE). Druggability assessment of the prepared histidine kinases was then carried out using SiteMap module of the Schrödinger molecular modeling suite.

Ambreen Asif is attending the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom for an advance research in Genetic Mapping after being awarded the prestigious Newton-Bhabha Research Fellowship. Asif is working under the supervision of Professor Adam Price in Scotland. She is pursuing PhD in AMU with specialisation in Genetics and Cytogenetics under the supervision of Prof M Y K Ansari. Asif has earlier been awarded the INSPIRE Research Fellowship of Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India. She is also a topper of the MSc (Botany) 2013 batch. She has also been conferred with Anjalina Khan Award and Regularity Award by the Women’s College in AMU.

Nigella sativa L. (Black cumin) is a small herbaceous plant, belonging to family Ranunculaceae. Seeds of this plant have huge medicinal properties. However, the low seed yield is not fulfilling the demand for pharmaceutical purposes. Therefore, an attempt has been made in this study to develop mutant lines of Nigella sativa by using EMS. It has been found that 0.1% EMS resulted in the mutant line which is taller with profused branching with high yield compared to wild type plant. Interestingly 1.0% EMS treatment produced dwarf mutant with few branches and low yield. To investigate the contrasting character of both the mutants, proteome analysis of leaves was carried out through 2D-gel electrophoresis. Analysis of proteome of wild type and mutant lines showed that 32 proteins were differentially expressed. These differentially expressed proteins were sequenced through MALDI-TOF and identified by using MASCOT software. The function and location of these proteins were analysed by using Uniprot software. These proteins were categorised on the basis of their functions and correlated with the phenotypic characters of mutant lines. Validation of differentially expressed proteins was carried out through studying expression pattern of respective gene through quantitative real time PCR. It has been found that expression of 26 proteins was due to mutation in the mutant lines.