Background and Objectives: Hereditary hearing loss is the most common genetic disorder in children. Nearly 120 genes associated with auditory impairment have been identified. Although the disease is clinically and genetically complex, the chances of identifying deafness-causing loci increase when studying consanguineous families.Materials and Methods: Whole-exome sequencing was performed to identify genetic variants underlying sensorineural hearing loss in affected individuals from a family with third-degree consanguineous practices.Results: A homozygous deletion of 250.285 kb was identified in the 16p12.2 region encompassing three genes, METTL9, IGSF6, and OTOA, and a partial deletion of the NPIPB4 gene co-segregated within the family.Conclusions: This study highlighted the genetic heterogeneity of hearing loss in consanguineous families. Future research should focus on the OTOA mutational spectrum in South Indian populations with hearing loss.

Recent instances of novel biological circuits that enable cells to gain biosynthetic skills demonstrate synthetic biology’s therapeutic potential. Synthetic biology is a branch of biology whose primary role is to build completely functional biological systems from the smallest basic elements such as DNA, proteins, and other organic molecules to complex bacteria. This review briefly mentions some novel way of synthetic strategies like bacterial modelling, two-component systems, synthetic peptide, and synthetic flavonoids used for targeting biofilm and drug-stable microbial communities. Bacterial modelling was mainly done in Escherichia coli and Mycoplasma using different strategies like introducing quorum sensing devices and CRISPR-mediated editing. Synthetic peptides are also one of the extensively studied ongoing areas which are produced from natural peptides taking as a template and altering amino acid position. Flavonoids are produced by two-step reaction and molecular hybridization methods. This kind of synthetic approach reported significant biofilm dispersion and lethal effects on clinically relevant bacteria like Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Streptococcus species and Klebsiella pneumonia.