Chamari Hettiarachchi

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Colombo

Fitness Evaluation of Two Component Release of Insects Carrying Dominant Lethality (RIDL) Based Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquito Lines

Inflammation is a complex biological process essential for protecting the body from harmful stimuli. However, dysregulated or chronic inflammation can contribute to the pathogenesis of various diseases, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and gout. Pro-inflammatory enzymes, such as arachidonate 5-lipoxygenase (A5-LOX), xanthine oxidase, and hya...

Cyclotides are unique cyclic mini proteins derived from plants which are recognized for the distinctive cyclic cystine knot (CCK) structure and the cyclized backbone. To date, more than 760 sequences of cyclotides have been identified across five major families, making them the largest known group of cyclic peptides. These cyclic peptides derived f...

Background Analysis of the content of the gut of fish helps in the understanding of their inter- and intra-specific interactions, fish behaviour, condition and energy intake. The stomach contents of the commercially important neritic tuna species of Sri Lanka, kawakawa (Euthynnus affinis), frigate tuna (Auxis thazard) and bullet tuna (Auxis rochei)...

Viola betonicifolia is a plant that contains cyclotides, which are exceptionally stable peptides that have garnered attention for their potential therapeutic applications. The heterologous expression of cyclotide genes is carried out with the recent advancement in molecular biology to enhance the utilization of cyclotides. Isolation of high-quality...

Nutritional and therapeutic properties of yoghurts can be enhanced by incorporating bioactive food components. The present study was focused on formulating a finger millet flour incorporated set yoghurt to deliver the inherent health benefits of finger millet to consumers in a ready-to-eat way. Ten yoghurt samples were formulated incorporating diff...

Nutritional and therapeutic properties of yoghurts can be enhanced by incorporating bioactive food components. The present study was focused on formulating a finger millet flour incorporated set yoghurt to deliver the inherent health benefits of finger millet to consumers in a ready-to-eat way. Ten yoghurt samples were formulated incorporating diff...

Understanding the origin of different populations is useful when managing the stocks of a species. Kawakawa (Euthynnus affinis), frigate tuna (Auxis thazard) and bullet tuna (Auxis rochei) are very important neritic tuna species found in Sri Lankan waters. Stock identification studies for these 3 species were carried out by using morphometrics as w...

In Ayurveda medicine, Senna alata (Fabaceae) and Datura metel (Solanaceae) are used as medicinal plants to treat skin infections. Most of those diseases are caused by microorganisms. There are very few antibiotics available for skin infections. Also, there is a huge risk of developing antibacterial resistance against the available antibiotics. Henc...

Scientists are exploring the potential of fungal endophytes to create new medications, recognizing their high bioactive content and potential for treating various diseases. The current study aimed to identify and isolate endophytic fungi from Adenanthera pavonina, a plant that belongs to the family Fabaceae and to evaluate their antibacterial activ...

Analyzing pharmaceutical products is a quality control requirement in a production facility. This study presents a CuO electrode-based reusable non-enzymatic sensor as an alternative method for rapid analysis of glucose levels in glucose infusions. CuO is extensively employed as an electrode material in non-enzymatic glucose sensors. Conventionally...

Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease with an estimated annual incidence of 390 million infections globally each year. This poses a substantial threat to public health and the economic growth of countries where the disease is endemic. There has been a noticeable increase in dengue cases in Sri Lanka spreading to various parts of the country over...

Sri Lanka is a biodiversity hotspot and one of the richest geographical locations of marine sponges in the Indian ocean. However, the most extensive taxonomical study on Sri Lankan sponge biodiversity dates back ~100 years and only a limited number of studies have been conducted on sponge natural products. In the current study, 35 marine sponge spe...

Diseases caused by various microorganisms have increased dramatically in recent years, and drug-resistant strains have become a serious concern. Currently, many researchers have focused on developing novel drugs from endophytic fungi, a promising natural source rich in bioactive compounds. This research was conducted to determine the antifungal pro...

Plant species Bauhinia racemosa, Senna alata, Cassia fistula and Tamarindus indica (Fabaceae) and Datura metel (Solanaceae) are commonly used to treat infectious skin diseases, and diseases in respiratory and gastrointestinal systems in Ayurveda medicine. Most of those diseases are caused by microorganisms. Therefore, this research was conducted to...

There are provided nonselective, nonenzymatic electrochemical sensor systems for detection and/or measurement of a redox-active analyte in a liquid sample. Sensor systems comprise a nonenyzmatic electrode system having a working electrode, a counter electrode, and a reference electrode, where the working electrode comprises a nonenzymatic modifier...

Geophila repens (L.) I.M. Johnst (Rubiaceae) is a traditional medicinal plant used in Sri Lanka for the treatment of bacterial infections. Due to its rich endophytic fungi content, it was postulated that endophytically-produced specialized metabolites may be responsible for its purported antibacterial effects. To test this hypothesis, eight pure en...

Cyclotides are an intriguing class of structurally stable circular miniproteins of plant origin with numerous potential pharmaceutical and agricultural applications. To investigate the occurrence of cyclotides in Sri Lankan flora, 50 medicinal plants were screened, leading to the identification of a suite of new cyclotides from Geophila repens of t...

Monascus fermented products including red mold rice have been used in South Asian countries since prehistoric times due to their numerous benefits. Secondary metabolites such as Monascus pigment, monacolin K, citrinin, gamma amino butyric acid, etc. produced by the fungus during the fermentation have brought out many advantages. Due to the contribu...

The development of resistance in bacterial strains against current antibacterial drugs is a crucial problem worldwide. At present, many researchers have started investigating the antibacterial properties of traditional medicine. This research was conducted to evaluate the determine the minimum inhibitory concentration of Ayurveda herbal formulation...

Water-soluble secondary metabolites from Monascus-fermented red mold rice (RMR) have been drawn attention as an alternative medication for overweight and obesity. In our previous studies, it was found that the water extracts from RMR produced by Monascus pilosus NBRC4507, is free from both lovastatin and citrinin, and inhibited lipid accumulation i...

Productivity of crop plants are enormously affected by biotic and abiotic stresses. The co-occurrence of several abiotic stresses may lead to death of crop plants. Hence, it is the responsibility of plant scientists to develop crop plants equipped with multistress tolerance pathways. A subgroup of zinc finger transcription factor family, known as B...

Species misidentification in the field of natural products is an acknowledged problem. These errors are especially widespread in sponge studies, albeit rarely assessed and documented. As a case study, we aim to revisit reports of isomalabaricane triterpenes, isolated from four demosponge genera: Jaspis, Geodia, Stelletta and Rhabdastrella. From a t...

Excessive lipid accumulation in the body causes people to become overweight and obese, conditions that are associated with an amplified risk of serious diseases. The fungi of genus Monascus produce various secondary metabolites such as monacolins, citrinin and fungal pigments, which are water-insoluble and have inhibitory potency for the lipid accu...

Monascus-fermented products are being used as food and medicine for over thousands of years. Due to the water solubility, adipogenesis inhibitors from Monascus-fermented products can be used in food or nutraceutical industry. This study was conducted to investigate the anti-adipogenic effects of the water extracts of Monascus pilosus NBRC4507 ferme...

Type II restriction enzymes (REs) which can cleave double stranded DNA in a sequence specific manner have many applications in recombinant DNA technology and are considered the workhorses of molecular biology. This study was carried out to screen bacterial communities for restriction enzymes. Soil and water samples were screened for isolation of ba...

Introduction Finger millet is considered as a therapeutic food for diabetes mellitus. However, there is a lack of scientific evidence on the antidiabetic potential of the finger millet varieties which are commonly cultivated in Sri Lanka. Materials and methods This study was focused on determining anti-α-amylase, anti-α-glucosidase, antiglycation,...

Aims: Development of probiotic beverages using previously isolated probiotic strains; Lactobacillus plantarum MF405176.1 and Lactobacillus curieae MF405178.1 in finger millet and banana flour substrates, respectively and monitor the microbiological, physicochemical and sensory properties of formulated probiotic beverages. Place and Duration of Stud...

Fluorescent dye-doped silica nanoparticles have been a major focus of research and development as potential fluorescent probes in biological systems. This is due to their strong fluorescence intensity, excellent photostability, biocompatibility, and ease of surface modification for bioconjugation. In this study, spherical silica nanoparticles doped...

The prevalence of inflammatory-mediated and oxidative stress-associated diseases is increasing worldwide, creating an increasing demand for novel sources of anti-inflammatory agents and antioxidants. This study was focused on determining the in vitro arachidonate 5-lipoxygenase (A5-LOX), xanthine oxidase (XO), hyaluronidase and oxidative burst inhi...

This study evaluates the oral toxicity of five probiotic strains recently isolated from fermented flour of finger-millet (Eleusine coracana) varieties of Sri Lanka. Probiotic strains; Lactobacillus plantarum MF405176, Lactobacillus fermentum MF033346, Lactococcus lactis subspecies lactis MF480428, Enterococcus faecium MF480431and Pediococcus acidil...

Type II restriction enzymes (REs) which can cleave double stranded DNA in a sequence specific manner have many applications in recombinant DNA technology and are considered the work horses of molecular biology. Soil and water samples were screened for isolation of bacteria, harboring restriction enzymes. Cell lysates of isolated bacteria were incub...

Replacing the ingredients used in biscuits with potential nutritive ingredients would be beneficial to improve the nutritional quality of the biscuits. Although, finger millet is highly nutritious when compared to other most commonly consumed cereals, limited availability of processed food products in ready-to-eat form has restricted the finger mil...

Cyclotides are an extremely stable class of peptides, ubiquotosuly distributed in Violaceae. The aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of cyclotides in Sri Lankan Violaceae plants, using combined tools of transcriptomics and mass spectrometry. New cyclotides were discovered for the first time in the wild flora of Sri Lanka, withi...

Silica nanoparticles are known as versatile inorganic materials that provide an efficient platform to interact with biological molecules. These interactions are believed to have occurred on prebiotic Earth at the origin of life. Experimentally, the interaction between silica and biomolecules is granted feasible due to the ease of synthesis and the...

The emerging significance of natural antimicrobial agents creates an imperative need to identify novel plant sources with antimicrobial activities. The objective of the present study was to evaluate antibacterial, antifungal and β-lactamase enzyme inhibitory activities of ethanolic and methanolic extracts of Ravi, Rawana and Oshadha finger millet v...

Paperback ISBN: 978-955-9321-31-6 eBook ISBN: 978-955-9321-32-3 Copyright © 2020 by M. N. Kaumal and C. Hettiarachchi

Endophytic fungi from medicinal plants are important natural sources of bioactive secondary metabolites for pharmaceutical industries to explore new drugs. The objective of this research was to isolate endophytic fungi from flowers, roots and leaves of Heliotropium indicum using two different growth media, Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) and Maltose Ext...

Aim: This survey was conducted to evaluate Sri Lankans' awareness and attitudes towards finger millet and preferences towards finger millet-based foods. Methodology: Pre-tested, self-administrated questionnaires were formulated in the three main languages used in Sri Lanka, namely Sinhala, English and Tamil. The questionnaires consisted of differen...

Background: The adverse side effects of cancer management and the increasing rate of mortality associated with cancers create a necessity to discover alternative strategies in cancer management and new anticancer agents especially derived from plant materials. Original Research Article Jayawardana et al.; SARJNP, 3(2): 1-9, 2020; Article no.SARJNP....

Glutelins are the primary source of energy storage in the endosperm of rice grains. Among the glutelin promoters, Glutelin B-1 (GluB-1) is widely studied and used in transgenic rice plants to express recombinant proteins in the endosperm. In this study, three regions: 350 bp, 1308 bp and 2300 bp of the GluB-1 promoter were PCR amplified from the ge...

There are provided nonselective, nonenzymatic electrochemical sensor systems for detection and/or measurement of a redox-active analyte in a liquid sample. Sensor systems comprise a nonenyzmatic electrode system having a working electrode, a counter electrode, and a reference electrode, where the working electrode comprises a nonenzymatic modifier...

Bio-conjugated fluorescent dye-doped silica nanoparticles have been a major emphasis of research and development as potential fluorescent probes in biological systems. This study was focused on investigating the possibility of using fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-doped silica nanoparticles as a biosensor to detect Escherichia coli in food and fe...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Sri Lanka is known to have very diverse flora. Many of these are used for plant-based remedies, which form the integral part of two Sri Lankan systems of traditional medicine, Ayurveda and Deshiya Chikitsa. Despite their widespread use, only a limited number of studies have probed into the scientific evidence for bio...

Soluble, insoluble and total dietary fiber contents, rapidly and slowly digestible starch contents, arabinoxylans, β-glucans, fructans, resistant starch, amylose and total sugar contents, minerals and trace elements compositions and proximate compositions of three finger millet varieties, namely Ravi, Rawana and Oshadha, were evaluated using standa...

Plant based remedies are of much importance in healthcare due to low side effects. The effective constituents contained in seeds of a papaya have not been utilized efficiently in the production of medicines. The purpose of this study was driven towards determining the total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, antioxidant capacity, anti-infla...

The main seed storage protein in wheat is gluten. It consists of gliadin and glutenins. Gluten gives high elasticity and extensibility during bread making, facilitating the formation of the dough. Rice is the staple food of Sri Lankans but, it has poor dough making ability compared to wheat. The aim of the present work was to characterize, clone an...

Probiotic food crowned as alternative therapy to treat gut associated disorders and infections. Majority of probiotics are of dairy origin. Emerging trend towards non-dairy probiotic foods over dairy is due to health risks (intolerance to milk sugar lactose, allergy to milk proteins, high fat and cholesterol content in the milk) associated with dai...

Non-dairy probiotics are gaining recognition in commercial food applications as they are known to confer functional health benefits to the host. They differ from dairy probiotic food as they are lactose and fat free, non-allergen substrates that are rich in prebiotics. Lactic acid bacteria are the most predominantly known probiotics in foods. The p...

This study aimed at isolating and identifying lactic acid bacteria (LAB) with probiotic potential from fermented flour of selected banana varieties grown in Sri Lanka and evaluating their probiotic and safety attributes in vitro. Ten lactic acid bacteria were isolated from six varieties of fermented banana flour, kolikuttu, seeni parakum, ambul nad...

The length-weight and length-length relationships were determined for the three neritic tuna species Euthynnus affinis, Auxis thazard and Auxis rochei caught within Sri Lankan waters. Samples were collected from October 2015 to September 2017. The R 2 values for all three species were higher than 0.9 and were highly significant (p<0.001). The condi...

The two Auxis species found in Sri Lankan waters, Auxis thazard (frigate tuna) and Auxis rochei (bullet tuna), have very similar morphological features and are frequently misidentified. The present study was initiated to identify these Auxis species accurately by molecular methods and to study their phylogenetic relationship. Samples of A. thazard...

The two Auxis species found in Sri Lankan waters, Auxis thazard (frigate tuna) and Auxis rochei (bullet tuna), have very similar morphological features and are frequently misidentified. The present study was initiated to identify these Auxis species accurately by molecular methods and to study their phylogenetic relationship. Samples of A. thazard...

This study aims to isolate and identify lactic acid bacteria from fermented flour of selected finger millet varieties grown in Sri Lanka and to evaluate their probiotic attributes and bioactive properties in vitro. Fifteen lactic acid bacteria were isolated from three varieties of fermented finger millet flour namely ravi, raavana and oshadha. Thes...

p class="abstract"> Background: High molecular weight (HMW) glutenin protein plays a crucial role in determining dough viscoelastic properties that determines the quality of wheat flour. The aim of the present study was to isolate, clone and analyze ( in silico ) the HMW glutenin gene of Triticum aestivum cultivar Dacke. Methods: Primers were desig...

Reactive oxygen species are continuously produced by normal physiological activities of the human body and these cause damage to the cell membrane and biomolecules and thereby resulting chronic diseases. Antioxidants are scavengers of such free radicals and could combat oxidative stress. In spite of the advances in modern medicine, plant based reme...

Type II Restriction enzymes (REs) can be used to cleave double stranded DNA in a sequence specific manner to produce fragments with desired ends. Herein, we report the first attempt to screen and isolate REs from bacteria in Sri Lankan soil and water samples collected from different regions of the country. Bacteria isolated from samples were grown...

Reactive oxygen species are continuously produced by normal physiological activities of the human body and these cause damage to the cell membrane and biomolecules and thereby resulting chronic diseases. Antioxidants are scavengers of such free radicals and could combat oxidative stress. In spite of the advances in modern medicine, plant based reme...

Reactive oxygen species and free radicals are implicated in numerous disorders, diseases as well as in the aging process. Natural antioxidants in the form of raw extracts or chemical constituents are sort after in order to combat destructive processes due to oxidative stress. The antioxidant and antibacterial activity of acetone, ethyl acetate and...

Cyclotides from Violaceae

Cyclotides from Sri Lankan plants

Arabidopsis BBX21 protein was identified as a transcription activator which can activate the light dependent transcription and positively regulate light mediated development of plants. The productivity of crop plants can be enhanced by over-expressing central regulators of light signaling pathway. The present study was conducted to enhance the prod...

Green tea is a beverage, associated with numerous health benefits due to antioxidant properties of polyphenol; which is the major component of it. The study was conducted to develop a solid dosage form of green tea polyphenols that can be used as a food supplement to improve lifestyle instead of the crude green tea extract. The total polyphenols we...