Synthetic pollutants are a looming threat to the entire ecosystem, including wildlife, the environment, and human health. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are natural biodegradable microbial polymers with a promising potential to replace synthetic plastics. This research is focused on devising a sustainable approach to produce PHAs by a new microbial strain using untreated synthetic plastics and lignocellulosic biomass. For experiments, 47 soil samples and 18 effluent samples were collected from various areas of Punjab, Pakistan. The samples were primarily screened for PHA detection on agar medium containing Nile blue A stain. The PHA positive bacterial isolates showed prominent orange–yellow fluorescence on irradiation with UV light. They were further screened for PHA estimation by submerged fermentation in the culture broth. Bacterial isolate 16a produced maximum PHA and was identified by 16S rRNA sequencing. It was identified as Stenotrophomonas maltophilia HA-16 (MN240936), reported first time for PHA production. Basic fermentation parameters, such as incubation time, temperature, and pH were optimized for PHA production. Wood chips, cardboard cutouts, plastic bottle cutouts, shredded polystyrene cups, and plastic bags were optimized as alternative sustainable carbon sources for the production of PHAs. A vital finding of this study was the yield obtained by using plastic bags, i.e., 68.24 ± 0.27%. The effective use of plastic and lignocellulosic waste in the cultivation medium for the microbial production of PHA by a novel bacterial strain is discussed in the current study.

We have previously reported that squalene overproducing yeast self-downregulate the expression of the ethanol pathway (non-essential pathway) to divert the metabolic flux to the squalene pathway. In this study, the effect of co-production of squalene and ethanol on other non-essential pathways (fusel alcohol pathway, FA) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was evaluated. However, before that, 13 constitutive promoters, like IRA1p, PET9p, RHO1p, CMD1p, ATP16p, USA3p, RER2p, COQ1p, RIM1p, GRS1p, MAK5p, and BRN1p, were engineered using transcription factor bindings sites from strong promoters HHF2p (−300 to −669 bp) and TEF1p (−300 to −579 bp), and employed to co-overexpress squalene and ethanol pathways in S. cerevisiae. The FSE strain overexpressing the key genes of the squalene pathway accumulated 56.20 mg/L squalene, a 16.43-fold higher than wild type strain (WS). The biogenesis of lipid droplets was stimulated by overexpressing DGA1 and produced 106 mg/L squalene in the FSE strain. AFT1p and CTR1p repressible promoters were also characterized and employed to downregulate the expression of ERG1, which also enhanced the production of squalene in FSE strain up to 42.85- (148.67 mg/L) and 73.49-fold (255.11 mg/L) respectively. The FSE strain was further engineered by overexpressing the key genes of the ethanol pathway and produced 40.2 mg/mL ethanol in the FSE1 strain, 3.23-fold higher than the WS strain. The FSE1 strain also self-downregulated the expression of the FA pathway up to 73.9%, perhaps by downregulating the expression of GCN4 by 2.24-fold. We demonstrate the successful tuning of the strength of yeast promoters and highest coproduction of squalene and ethanol in yeast, and present GCN4 as a novel metabolic regulator that can be manipulated to divert the metabolic flux from the non-essential pathway to engineered pathways.

Nanotechnology offers exciting prospects against infectious agents, particularly multidrug resistance bacteria (MDR), which is the roaring concern of this era. Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-Nps) efficiently deliver therapeutic agents into living systems due to their biocompatibility and bioactivity, which make them highly effective against infectious pathogens. The present investigation was designed to investigate the impact of the ZnO-Nps in combination with the Piperacillin-Tazobactam (TZP) drug against MDR. TZP are beta-lactam antibiotics highly effective against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and are recommended for the empirical treatment of Febrile neutropenia (FN) associated with chemotherapy treatment. For this study, three different-sized ZnONp combinations were used. The extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBLs) producing Escheria coli and MDR P. aeruginosa strain sensitivity profiling towards different combinations of ZnO-Nps and Piperacillin-Tazobactam were measured. The synthesized Zno-Nps w ere d esignated a s Z n-1, Z n- 2, and Zn-3 based on their sizes, and were made in different combinations with the commercially available drug TZP (ZnO-Nps+ Drug) against MDR E.coli and P. aeruginosa. There was no synergistic effect observed against growth inhibition of E.coli. The combined dose of Zn-1 and TZP showed better antibacterial efficacy even as compared to the pure drug against P. aeruginosa. The study revealed that the dosage and biological activity of drugs used to treat fatal human diseases like cancer can be decreased while their efficacy can be boosted by using ZnO nanoparticles as powerful drug delivery systems.

Sustainable production of food crops relies on germplasm improvement and genetic diversity that helps to identify appropriate parents, which is very important step in breeding of genotypes having high yield potential for future use. This study was conducted to investigate the extent of genetic diversity using multivariate technique on the basis of qualitative and quantitative traits. An experiment was comprised of 74 exotic genotypes and started at National Agriculture Research Center Islamabad, Pakistan during autumn 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Data was recorded on qualitative and quantitative traits by following standard procedures and Biplot analysis was used to calculate the significance among the studied quantitative traits to exhibit the strength of relationship between traits. Results showed significant diversity in qualitative traits and quantitative traits. Red, yellowish, brown, light yellow, light brown color tubers were produced. Alike, genotypes produced yellow, cream and white flesh color tubers. Genotypes had oval, round, oblong, elliptic and reform with medium, small and large size tubers. Alike, brown, light brown, dark red and yellow eyes color was noted. In case of quantitative traits, genotypes had high variance regarding plant height, leaf area and number of tubers per lane. Genotypes had very high genetic variance for weight of tuber per plant and weight of tuber per lane while low variance was recorded for germination, number of stem per plant and number of eyes per tuber. Significant positive correlation was observed between number of tubers per plant (TPP) with number of eyes on tubers (r = 0.241) and number of tubers per lane (TPL) (r = 0.349). But negative correlation was noted between number of tubers per plant (TPP) with plant height (r = -246), leaf area (-0.529) and germination (r = -0.283). Plant height was found significantly positive correlated with leaf area (r= 0.456), germination percentage (r = 0.255) and weight of tubers per plant (r = 0.307). Leaf area (LA) showed positive significant correlation with number of tubers per plant (r = 0.466) and weight of tubers per plant (r = 0.263)., yield and harvest index (r = 0.798, 0.755, 0.255). Weight of tubers per lane (WTL) showed positive correlation with weight of tubers per plant (r = 0.387). Regarding the interrelation between the traits and genotypes, the first two principal component axes (PC1, 24.83% and PC2, 23.46%) accounted for about 48.29% of the total variability reflecting the complexity of the variation between the plotted traits of genotypes.