Artemisinin is the current drug of choice for treatment of malaria and a number of other diseases. It is obtained from the annual herb, Artemisia annua and some microbial sources by genetic engineering. There is a great concern that the artemisinin production at current rate will not meet the increasing demand by the pharmaceutical industry, so looking for additional sources is imperative.

Enterococci normally inhabit the intestinal tract of humans and are also a potential pathogen in causing nosocomial infections. The increase in antibiotic resistance and transfer of antibiotic resistance gene to Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) due to co-colonization has increased its importance in research. The aim of the study was to evaluate local epidemiology of nasal and rectal colonization with Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) and Enterococcus faecium (E. faecium) in patients of Paediatrics Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and correlation with clinical and socioeconomic factors.

In real engineering applications, nanoparticles can face hurdles of complex behavior of pollutants, for which electrostatic forces and background electrolyte can prove to be one of the robust mechanisms to remove pollutants from wastewater. In the present work, magnetite (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticles (NPs) and trioctyl phosphine oxide (TOPO) coated Fe₃O₄ NPs were synthesized and characterized for removing divalent Ni²⁺ and Cd²⁺ ions. Morphological and chemical analysis of both NPs was performed, and batch adsorption experiments were performed to study the influence of different pH ranges, concentrations of adsorbents and different contact timings. TOPO functionalized magnetite nanoparticles were found to have better adsorption capacities as compared to Fe₃O₄ at higher pH values. Isotherm models were run to identify the adsorption process. Langmuir isotherm model data fitted best for both metal ions adsorption, while Freundlich data suited best only for Ni²⁺ ions. The regression values for kinetic models confirmed that pseudo-second-order fitted best to the adsorption of both Ni²⁺ and Cd²⁺. Higher adsorption values were noticed for Ni²⁺ at higher dosages of both bare and TOPO-coated iron oxide NPs. Cadmium was found to have no influence of adsorbent dosage. Contact time was found to impact sorption values, i.e., adsorption was greater initially and then decreased with the passage of time. The study concludes that TOPO decorated Fe₃O₄ NPs can be more efficiently used for wastewater treatment. Furthermore, the presence of alkyl chains in TOPO can be immobilized at surface of metals to undergo adsorption more efficiently.

Rough lemon (Citrus jambhiri Lush.) is the most commonly used Citrus rootstock in south Asia. It is extremely sensitive to salt stress that decreases the growth and yield of Citrus crops in many areas worldwide. Over expression of the yeast halotolerant gene (HAL2) results in increasing the level of salt tolerance in transgenic plants. Transformation of rough lemon was carried out by using Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains LBA4404 harboring plasmid pJRM17. Transgenic shoots were selected on kanamycin 100 mg L^-1 along with 250 mg L^-1 each of cefotaxime and vancomycin for effective inhibition of Agrobacterium growth. The Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium containing 200 μM acetoseryngone (AS) proved to be the best inoculation and co-cultivation medium for transformation. MS medium supplemented with 3 mg L^-1 of 6-benzylaminopurine (BA) showed maximum regeneration efficiency of the transformed explants. The final selection of the transformed plants was made on the basis of PCR and Southern blot analysis. Rough lemon has been successfully transformed via Agrobacterium tumefaciens with β-glucuronidase (GUS) and HAL2. Various factors affecting gene transformation and regeneration efficiency were also investigated.

The current study was conducted to evaluate the antimicrobial, antioxidant, antileishmanial and cytotoxic potential of designed derivatives of 1,1′-(1,3-phenylenebis(methylene))bis(3-alkyl/aryl-1H-benzimidazol-3-ium) salts. The antibacterial potential of the test compounds was investigated against Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and two methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains (MRSA10, MRSA11), where compound 6 showed the best results. For brine shrimp lethality bioassay (BSLB), compound 6 again showed up to 100% mortality at 200 μg/mL and 56.7% mortality at 6.25 μg/mL. Antileishmanial assay was performed against Leishmania tropica at 20 μg/mL dosage, where 6 showed the most promising activity with 16.26% survival (83.74% mortality; IC₅₀=14.63 μg/mL). The anticancer potential of the selected benzimidazole derivatives was evaluated against two selected cell lines (human colorectal cancer, HCT-116 and breast adenocarcinoma, MCF-7) using sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay. Compound 6 was found to be the most effective cytotoxic compound with 75% inhibition of HCT-116 proliferation at 1 mg/mL concentration. Succinctly, 6 exhibited impressive pharmacological potential that might be attributed to its higher lipophilic character owing to the longer N-substituted alkyl chains when compared to the other test compounds.