Male infertility is a global public health concern. Teratozoospermia is a qualitative anomaly of spermatozoa morphology, contributing significantly to male infertility, whereas azoospermia is the complete absence of spermatozoa in the ejaculate. Thus, there is a serious need for unveiling the common origin and/or connection between both of these diseases, if any. This study aims to identify common potential biomarker genes of these two diseases via an in silico approach using a meta-analysis of microarray data. In this study, a differential expression analysis of genes was performed on four publicly available RNA microarray datasets, two each from teratozoospermia (GSE6872 and GSE6967) and azoospermia (GSE145467 and GSE25518). From the analysis, 118 DEGs were found to be common to teratozoospermia and azoospermia, and, interestingly, sperm autoantigenic protein 17 (SPA17) was found to possess the highest fold change value among all the DEGs (9.471), while coiled-coil domain-containing 90B (CCDC90B) and coiled-coil domain-containing 91 (CCDC91) genes were found to be common among three of analyses, i.e., Network Analyst, ExAtlas, and GEO2R. This observation indicates that SPA17, CCDC90B, and CCDC91 genes might have significant roles to play as potential biomarkers for teratozoospermia and azoospermia. Thus, our study opens a new window of research in this area and can provide an important theoretical basis for the diagnosis and treatment of both these diseases.
Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) has emerged as a critical challenge in rapidly urbanizing towns of Assam, where increasing waste volumes and limited infrastructure pose significant environmental and health risks. This study assesses the concise status of MSWM in Mariani town, Jorhat district, through household surveys, stakeholder interviews, field observations, and statistical analyses. Findings reveal that most of the waste streams are primarily from households. However, infrastructural gaps such as irregular collection, inadequate public bins, and absence of scientific disposal facilities undermine effective management. The household survey highlighted low levels of awareness, poor participation in segregation at source, and inconsistent satisfaction with municipal services. Among the factors influencing Waste Management Practices, recycling and composting were found to be statistically significant. Although municipal authorities claim daily collection and conduct awareness programs, discrepancies between policy and practice remain evident. The study underscores the necessity of an integrated approach-combining sustained public education, improved infrastructure, community participation, and adoption of composting and recycling technologies. Such interventions are vital for transitioning Mariani towards a circular economy and aligning local waste management practices with climate change mitigation goals.
(1) Background: To assess the genetic makeup among the agro-economically important members of Euphorbiaceae, the present study was conducted to identify and characterize high-quality single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and their comparative distribution in exonic and intronic regions from the publicly available expressed sequence tags (ESTs). (2) Methods: Quality sequences obtained after pre-processing by an EG assembler were assembled into contigs using the CAP3 program at 95% identity; the mining of SNP was performed by QualitySNP; GENSCAN (standalone) was used for detecting the distribution of SNPs in the exonic and intronic regions. (3) Results: A total of 25,432 potential SNPs (pSNP) and 14,351 high-quality SNPs (qSNP), including 2276 indels, were detected from 260,479 EST sequences. The ratio of quality SNP to potential SNP ranged from 0.22 to 0.75. A higher frequency of transitions and transversions was observed more in the exonic than the intronic region, while indels were present more in the intronic region. C↔T (transition) was the most dominant nucleotide substitution, while in transversion, A↔T was the dominant nucleotide substitution, and in indel, A/- was dominant. (4) Conclusions: Detected SNP markers may be useful for linkage mapping; marker-assisted breeding; studying genetic diversity; mapping important phenotypic traits, such as adaptation or oil production; or disease resistance by targeting and screening mutations in important genes.