Antioxidant Activity of Selected Medicinal Plants of Pakistan

The flora of Pakistan due to its diverse climatic and soil conditions and many ecological regions is very rich in medicinal plants. According to a general survey of Pakistan about 6000 species of flowering plants have been exist, out of 6000 about 400-600 are medicinally important species. Many plants have potential to be used as natural remedy againstdiseases. The studies about antioxidant potential of phytochemical constituents found in plants may also be necessary because of their medicinal properties. The body uses oxygen and nutrients to make energy. Oxygen also helps the immune system fight disease and harmful substances. Oxidation is a process that uses by products formed from oxygen fighting disease to create molecular agents that react with body tissues. 

Unfortunately, this process can form “free radicals” that cause cell damage. Antioxidants help reduce the number of free radicals that form in the body, lower the energy levels of existing free radicals, and stop oxidation chain reactions to lower the amount of damage caused by free radicals. The antioxidants of food are thought to prevent diseases caused byoxidative stress. For the current study the fruits of seven plants were selected. The selection of these plants was based on the observation that these are being used by local healers intensively for treatment of different ailments. The details of these plants are as follows.

Purification Propensity for Proteins from Bacillus halodurans

The demand for proteins with special purposes increases significantly, for example, special proteins are in good need in development of sensitive, specific and reliable differential diagnostic assays. To meet such huge demand, proteins of interest can be expressed in either prokaryotic or eukaryotic cells, like Escherichia coli, to produce recombinant proteins. However, this is not an easy task and is often costly. Purification ofrecombinant proteins from plant biomass currently accounts for almost 80% ofproduction cost. A series of difficulties may be encountered in purification. For instance, purified proteins from a host may accumulate in low titers and may be mixed with infection or form protein aggregates. Therefore a purification scheme usually includes many steps, such as affinity chromatography, precipitation, protecting of recombinant proteins from degradation with stabilizer, centrifugation and so on.

In order to develop an efficient and cost-effective purification scheme, many efforts have been made and much has been achieved infinding the factors that affect protein purification. At codon optimization level, N-terminal rare codons increase expression with some reservation.

Workshop on Recent Applications of Bioinformatics and Ecoinformatics (WBE 2015)

Bioinformatics, the application of state-of-the-art computational technologies to analyse the information related to biomolecules for understanding their biological processes and regulation of gene expression and protein functions, has now become an important discipline in a wide range of molecular biology areas including systems biology, genomics and transcriptomics. Ecoinformatics, themanagement and analysis of environmental information through the application ofcomputer technology, is also a rapidly developing area in ecology that facilitates large-scale research associated with natural resources.

The workshop of Bioinformatics and Ecoinformatics (WBE 2015) was held at Botany Department, Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Egypt in September 2015. The firstobjective of this workshop was to provide an up-to-date introduction intobasics and applications of bioinformatics in biological research using public data resources.

Discover Natural Chemical Drugs in Modern Medicines

Differences between synthetic drugs and natural chemical drugs, natural-borne drugs are of great medical significances-higher therapeutic index than synthetic chemical drugs. This character shows higher capability to overcome drug-resistance. For example, the most effective antibiotics (penicillin, streptomycin or cephalosporin) are natural chemical products. They are much better than a series of synthetic agents (sulphonamide) and so on. Yet, these kinds of pharmacological efforts still like finding a needle from hay-stakes owing to the complicated processes of diversity drug screening models.

As a result, new initiatives must be established to overcome these kinds of drawbacks. This perspective addresses and systematically analyzes on this matter and highlights it with modern touches.China has a long history and reputations of treating a wide variety of diseases of both human origins and lethal pathogen from outside natural sources. These medical practices came back from 2000-5000 year ago. Several medical books of this kind were published afterwards.

Nutrient Profile of Native Woody Species and Medicinal Plants in Northeastern Mexico: A Synthesis

Woody plants and medicinal plants possesss various macro nutrients and micronutrients. These are essential to bring about the growth anddevelopment of the plants. These because of their medicinal values are used traditionally to cure various diseases. We made a short synthesis of researches undertaken on macro and micronutrients of woody species and medicinal plants.

Woody plants of Tamaulipan Thornscrubs in the semiarid regions are of great economic importance for various uses such as timber for furniture, fences, firewood and serve as sources of forage for wild animalgrazing. Few studies are undertaken on nutrient contents of woody plants.