Kishore K. Das

Purification and biochemical characterization of a thermostable, alkaliphilic, extracellular α-amylase from Bacillus subtilis DM-03, a strain isolated from the traditional fermented food of India

Bacillus subtilis strain DM‐03, which is isolated from starter culture used for the production of alcohol by local Assam tribes, grows optimally at 52–55 °C and secretes a significant amount of α‐amylase at pH 8.0 into the culture media. This α‐amylase, purified by ion‐exchange, gel‐filtration and reverse‐phase HPLC, constitutes 2.9% of the total extracellular protein. This purified enzyme, named Bsamy‐I, has a subunit with molecular mass of 42.8 kDa as determined by SDS/PAGE, and optimum temperature and pH values at 52–55 °C and 9.0 respectively, which makes it ideal for use in the detergent industries. Maximum α‐amylase production is obtained by using soluble starch and NH4Cl as carbon and nitrogen sources respectively. Thermostability of the enzyme is evident from heating the enzyme at 95 °C for 10 min, which results in a loss of 60% of the original enzyme activity. 4‐Bromophenacyl bromide and PMSF at 4 and 1.5 mM concentration respectively completely abolish the enzymic activity, documenting the essential role of histidine and carboxylic residues in the catalytic process.

Socio-economic and demographic determinants of childhood anemia

OBJECTIVE To evaluate socio-economic and demographic determinants of anemia among Indian children aged 6-59 months. METHODS Statistical analysis was performed on the cross-sectional weighted sample of 40,885 children from 2005 to 2006 National Family Health Survey by using multinomial logistic regression to assess the significance of some risk factors in different degrees of child anemia. Anemia was diagnosed by World Health Organization (WHO) cut-off points on hemoglobin level. Pearsons chi-squared test was applied to justify the associations of anemia with different categories of the study population. RESULTS The prevalence of anemia was 69.5%; 26.2% mild, 40.4% moderate, and 2.9% severe anemia. Overall prevalence rate, along with mild and moderate cases, showed an increasing trend up to 2 years of age and then decreased. Rural children had a higher prevalence rate. Of 28 Indian states in the study, 10 states showed very high prevalence, the highest being Bihar (77.9%). Higher birth order, high index of poverty, low level of maternal education, mothers anemia, non-intake of iron supplements during pregnancy, and vegetarian mother increased the risks of all types of anemia among children (p<0.05). Christian population was at lower risk; and Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Class categories were at higher risk of anemia. CONCLUSION The results suggest a need for proper planning and implementation of preventive measures to combat child anemia. Economically under-privileged groups, maternal nutrition and education, and birth control measures should be priorities in the programs.

Searching of Conserved Motifs within a Partial secA Gene Sequence of Phytoplasma Associated with Root (Wilt) Disease of Coconut (Cocos nucifera) in India: Using a Frequency Based Approach

Coconut palm (Cocos nucifera L.) root (wilt) disease (CRWD) became a serious concern for coconut cultivation in coastal region of India. Due to which, India looses a considerable economic loss of about 968 million nuts, annually. The disease is non lethal. It has already been reported that species of the phytoplasmas, belonging to ribosomal group 16SrXI, are primarily associated with CRWD. In the current study, our objective is to identify motif that describes the conserved region within protein sequence of CRWD. Due to variations of amino acid residues at given positions within a positional weight matrix (PWM), the pattern of protein sequence motif can be identified using a multinomial probabilistic model. The basic assumption underlying this model is that the amino acid residues within a sequence are independent and identically distributed. To determine the overall probability of that PWM, the formula for computing information content or relative entropy may also be used. Here, such measure has been proposed to identify motifs within PWM, in this paper. Finally, various conserved motifs within the partial secA gene sequence of phytoplasma associated with CRWD, using that measure, have been successfully identified. On the basis of obtained results, we reached to conclusions that conserved regions or motifs (of different length) are expected to be found at (163–171) and (120–138) positions of within that partial secA gene sequence.

On Some Aspects of Unbiased Estimation of Parameters in Quasi-Binomial Distributions

In this article, an attempt has been made to settle the question of existence of unbiased estimator of the key parameter p of the quasi-binomial distributions of Type I (QBD I) and of Type II (QBD II), with/without any knowledge of the other parameter φ appearing in the expressions for probability functions of the QBDs. This is studied with reference to a single observation, a random sample of finite size m as also with samples drawn by suitably defined sequential sampling rules.

Identification of Protein Motifs in Phytoplasma Associated with Root (Wilt) Disease of Coconut (Cocos nucifera) Using an Improved Statistical Measure

Protein motif is a conserved short region within larger sequence, and it provides an important way to get functional or structural information about a noble protein sequence. This study primarily provides a new approach to identify motifs which are considered to play an important role to determine functional or structural class of any protein. Coconut palm (Cocos nucifera L.) root (wilt) disease (CRWD) became a serious concern for coconut cultivation in the coastal region of South India. It has already been reported that species of the phytoplasma (-belonging to ribosomal group 16SrXI) is primarily associated with CRWD. In this study, our objective is to modify an existing motif identification algorithm, and also identify motifs that describe their conserved region within a CRWD phytoplasma protein sequence. Accordingly, the existing information content measure formulas for a no-gapped and gapped aligned sequence set were re-formulated. Further, an improvement on both these existing measures has been vied by incorporating prior information of BLOSUM90 substitution matrix. Results showed that proposed modifications could successfully identify N-terminal myristoylation motif within an alignment matrix of Arabidopsis thaliana sequences; concurrently our modification has also been validated. Both the approaches, namely frequency- and BLOSUM90-based information content, have been compared using the observed results, in terms of identified motifs. Finally, we could also test this noble BLOSUM90-based approach to correctly predict conserved regions at locations, (163–171) and (117–138), in an aligned secA gene sequence set of phytoplasma, an etiological agent of CRWD.

Insurance and Banking Habits Regulating Economic Stability of the People of Char Areas (Riverine) in Lower Assam

Riverine (Char area) of the Brahmaputra flowing through Assam are most backward and neglected areas. There about 2251 Chars covering about 10% population of Assam. This chapter tries to examine the Insurance and Banking habits regulating economic stability of the people of char areas in Lower Assam. This study is based on the survey ‘Dynamics of socio-economic development of Char areas of Lower Assam’ was conducted during the year 2003–2005 under the financial support of University Grants Commission, New Delhi on randomly selected char areas. Insurance and banking habits have been considered in the survey to study the economic stability of the people. A log-linear model and contingency table have been considered in this study. It is observed that the proportion of insured households in the low income group is nil; it rises to a small in the lower middle group and then goes up in the upper middle group and after that steadily increases to the high income group. The economic status reveals that only the upper middle income and high income group households have been able to avail the facility of banking and insurance. The households in the low income group and lower middle income group went unrepresented.

A Study on DNA Sequence of Rice Using Scoring Matrix Method and ANOVA Technique

In this paper, 12 accession numbers of rice has been used. The accession numbers have been taken from the article Cho et al. where it has already been used for other studies. The accession number for DNA, i.e., A, C, G and T along with the gap character (–) have been converted into alignment matrix with 5 rows and 7473 columns. The alignment has been done using ClustalX software. The 7473 columns have been alienated into 5 parts with different dimensions. Later for each part scoring has been done separately. Highest scores from all the 5 parts have been noted down. To minimize the data, the common regions between these 5 parts have been taken into consideration. Later one way ANOVA (Huck and McLean in Psychological Bulletin, 82(4), 511–518,1975; Mukhopadhyay in Applied statistics. Books and Allied (P) Ltd., Kolkata, 2011) has been constructed and conclusions are drawn accordingly.

MODELING OF MEAN TEMPERATURE OF FOUR STATIONS IN ASSAM.

Tanusree Deb Roy 1 and Kishore K. Das 2 . 1. Department of Statistics, Assam University, Silchar-788011, Assam, India. 2. Department of Statistics, Gauhati University, Guwahati-781014, Assam, India. ...................................................................................................................... Manuscript Info Abstract ......................... ........................................................................ Manuscript History

Normalization of gene expression data using support vector machine approach

Normalization of gene expression data refers the process of minimizing non biological variation in measured probe intensity levels so that biological differences in gene expression can be appropriately detected. Several linear normalization within arrays approaches has already been proposed. Recently, use of non-linear methods has been gained quite attention. In this study, our objective is to formulate non-linear normalization methods using support vector regression (SVR) and support vector machine quantile regression (SVMQR) approaches, more easier way and, assess the consistency of these methods with respect to other standard normalization methods for further application in gene expression data. SVR and SVMQR normalization methods have been implemented and their performance have been evaluated with respect to other standard normalization methods namely, locally weighted scatter plot smoothing and Kernel regression. It has been found that the normalized data based on proposed methods are capable of producing minimum variances within replicate groups and also able to detect truly expressible significant genes with respect to above mentioned other normalized data.