Nimanthi Jayathilaka

Nimanthi Jayathilaka
University of Kelaniya · Department of Chemistry

BSc, PhD

About

126
Publications
85,399
Reads
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1,318
Citations
Additional affiliations
June 2016 - present
University of Kelaniya
Position
  • Professor
December 2012 - June 2016
University of Kelaniya
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
May 2003 - May 2006
University of Chicago
Position
  • Technician
Education
September 1999 - May 2003
University of Wisconsin–Superior
Field of study
  • Molecular Cell Biology/ Chemistry

Publications

Publications (126)
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Plastics and rubber play a vital role in human lives due to their versatility and functionality. However, polymeric waste presents significant environmental and economic challenges. This study investigates the deterioration of selected polymers by some unknown fungal strains. Fungal colonies associated with a PVC-coated phone cable under room-tempe...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
MicroRNAs play important roles in regulating gene expression and cellular functions during viral infections, including dengue fever. While miR-150-5p has been identified as a circulating biomarker in blood, its potential in saliva as an early, non-invasive prognostic marker for severe dengue (SD) has yet to be explored. We analyzed multiple NCBI GE...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The Leptotrombidium mites are vectors of Orientia tsutsugamushi and a significant public health threat worldwide: scrub typhus is endemic in Sri Lanka. In this respect, the need to extract DNA from the Leptotrombidium mites in the field is critical for rapid diagnosis and surveillance; nevertheless, this presents some difficulties, including sample...
Conference Paper
The COVID-19 pandemic resulting from the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections caused a global public health crisis that significantly affected the lives of many individuals worldwide. Understanding SARS-CoV-2 host-virus interactions led to insights into disease progression and potential treatments. miR-150, a 22-nucleotide single-stranded microRNA that...
Chapter
Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) is an economic crop mainly found in tropical countries. Coconut fruit consists of kernel, water and shell. There are many food products currently available in the markets which are made from coconut kernel or coconut milk. Coconut milk is the aqueous extract of coconut kernel. The focus in this chapter is to discuss bioc...
Conference Paper
Gene expression studies on gene transcription to synthesize functional gene products have been used extensively to understand the biological differences between different disease conditions. Thus, this study determines differentially expressed genes in dengue infection during disease progression following the three phases: Febrile, Defervescence an...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Virgin coconut oil (VCO) is consumed as major source of fat and present in a wide range of health, and cosmetic products. It is a major agricultural product in Sri Lanka catering over 1% of the global demand. However, fungal contamination is a critical issue with production of VCO. This study was conducted to determine the fungal species that conta...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Plants have been a source of natural healing compounds since ancient times. Plant extracts are frequently used as complementary treatment for many chronic diseases, due to their demonstrated beneficial properties such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities. The present study was designed to assess the total phenolic content (TP...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
There is a lot of interest in using natural alternatives for synthetic food additives including food preservatives. Research has been conducted to explore the antioxidant and antimicrobial properties of tannins from Psidium guineense Sw. leaves (PGSLT), the major components in cinnamon bark and leaf, namely cinnamaldehyde and eugenol, and the ethan...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Rice (Oryza sativa) bran (RB) is one of the most important co-products in the rice milling industry. It is frequently utilized in animal feed or discarded as waste. After milling, the majority of RB cells are ruptured, and the bran layer is removed from the endosperm. Due to that, the RB lipids encounter highly reactive rice bran lipase (RBL) enzym...
Chapter
The connection between the helpful and potentially harmful microbes that make up the microbiome of the humans, animals and the shared environment is central for achieving optimal health outcomes. Growing human population, climate changes, land use and international travel and trade have significant effect on the spread of existing diseases, emergen...
Article
Virgin coconut oil was prepared by four wet extraction methods which included hot extraction by boiling coconut milk, and three cold extraction methods by centrifugation, fermentation, and chilling followed by thawing of coconut milk. The chemical characteristics related to both saponifiable and unsaponifiable fractions of oils were evaluated. Qual...
Conference Paper
Fish forecasting is important to manage available resources, implement new rules and regulations for sustainable economic growth, and ensure food and nutrition security. It is a global trend to use machine learning based on artificial intelligence in many aspects of the fisheries sector. In this study, Support Vector Regression (SVR) supervised mac...
Conference Paper
Fish forecasting is important to manage available resources, implement new rules and regulations for sustainable economic growth, and ensure food and nutrition security. It is a global trend to use machine learning based on artificial intelligence in many aspects of the fisheries sector. In this study, Support Vector Regression (SVR) supervised mac...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Fish forecasting is important to manage available resources, implement new rules and regulations for sustainable economic growth, and ensure food and nutrition security. It is a global trend to use machine learning based on artificial intelligence in many aspects of the fisheries sector. In this study, Support Vector Regression (SVR) supervised mac...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
When the initial ECG of patients suffering with acute chest pain is non-diagnostic, it is difficult to clinically diagnose . Diagnosis of NSTEMI and UA then requires serial ECGs and serial marker testing. Admitting all the patients who visit the emergency department with complaints of acute chest pain for serial investigations creates a high econom...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Marine fisheries industry plays an important role in social and economic life of Chilaw, Sri Lanka. Sudden decline of fish harvest in Chilaw was noticed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study evaluates the relationship between COVID -19 related changes and their impact on fish harvest and monthly income of fishers. A sample of 150 fishers were se...
Article
Coconut milk is widely used in culinary applications in many Asian countries. The beneficial effect of coconut milk on gut health is limited to traditional knowledge and the beneficial effect of phenolic compounds present in coconut milk on gut microorganisms is not known. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of the phenolic compounds pr...
Chapter
The global demand for water has increased due to population expansion and increased socioeconomic activities. Consequently, natural water resources are depleted due to the environmental impact of human activity. The remaining water resources are polluted by domestic waste, mining effluents, commercial waste, and agricultural waste. Common water pol...
Chapter
Bioremediation of metals involves the use of living organisms, like microbes to remove or convert metal pollutants from soil, water, and other environments to innocuous forms. Metals or metalloid pollutants may be introduced into the biosphere due to natural and anthropogenic activities. Exposure to the high concentration of metals is toxic and det...
Chapter
Water resources are polluted with chemical and microbial contaminants from agricultural waste, impurities from mining, domestic waste, and industrial effluents due to increased anthropogenic activities resulting from increasing population and rapid industrialization. The impact of such activities on the microbial diversity, distribution of pathogen...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The COVID-19 outbreak has created a huge social and economic disruption worldwide due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Papain-like protease (PL pro) of SARS-CoV-2 plays a crucial role in viral replication and host innate immunity suppression. Therefore, it is an ideal therapeutic target to develop inhibitors. Thus, t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Despite of COVID-19 vaccination, immune escape of new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants has created an urgent priority to identify additional antiviral drugs. In the short span of two years, SARS-CoV-2 has evolved to raise five variants of concern out of which Omicron has currently become the dominant variant all...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Fatty acid-binding proteins (FABPs) play a vital role in fatty acid metabolism, cell growth and proliferation and cancer development in humans. Recent studies have revealed that FABP-12 can promote prostate cancer through activation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-) which has previously been reported as a driver of metast...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coconut milk (CM) or the aqueous extract of grated coconut meat is used in culinary applications when preparing both vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods in many Asian countries. Despite CM is traditionally known to be beneficial for gut health, scientific evidence supporting such claims is extremely limited. The beneficial properties of phenolic an...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Aristolochia elegans Mast, also known as Calico flower, is an ornamental plant found around the world including Asia. In traditional medicine, the plant has been used to treat a variety of disorders by employing its broad spectrum of pharmacological properties such as antibacterial, antitumoral, antidiarrheal, anti-snake venom, and anti-scorpion ve...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coconut milk (CM) is a major source of dietary fat in a Sri Lankan meal. It is rich in saturated, medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) and various polyphenols. Some of the ingested fats and polyphenols are not absorbed in the small intestine and reach the colon. This study assessed the formation of metabolic products from CM and the influence of CM on i...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The main source of fat in the diet affects the gut microbiome composition. Coconut milk (CM) has a high percentage of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA). A portion of MCFA reaches the colon and is fermented by the microbiota. This study was conducted with Wistar rats to study the effect of CM on colonic microbial diversity. Twelve-week-old female Wist...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Rolling Circle Amplification (RCA) is an isothermal amplification process that can be utilized for rapid amplification of target nucleic acids. In contrast to PCR, which uses thermocycling to mediate denaturation, annealing, and subsequent extension, RCA can be performed at a single reaction temperature making RCA an attractive solution for disease...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
There are multiple methods for producing virgin coconut oil, which can broadly be divided into wet and dry processes. In the wet methods, coconut oil is directly extracted from the coconut milk, an aqueous emulsion is prepared using freshly grated coconut kernel. The method used to extract oil can affect the quality parameters and the phenolic prof...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Dengue fever is a mosquito borne viral infection, caused by a flavivirus. It is rapidly spreading in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Dengue infected patients demonstrate several clinical manifestations from mild dengue fever (DF) to more serious severe dengue fever (SD).The common symptoms of dengue fever are nausea, vomiting, re...
Article
Full-text available
Despite COVID-19 vaccination, immune escape of new SARS-CoV-2 variants has created an urgent priority to identify additional antiviral drugs. Targeting main protease (Mpro) expressed by SARS-CoV-2 is a therapeutic strategy for drug development due to its prominent role in viral replication cycle. Leaves of Murraya koenigii are used in various tradi...
Article
Full-text available
The total phenol content (TPC) in coconut oil varies with extraction method, variety, nature of coconut kernel components and geographical origin. Commonly reported TPCs of coconut oils extracted by dry methods and wet methods are in the range of 70-300 mg/kg and 250-650 mg/kg, respectively. Based on the commonly reported data, the TPC of coconut o...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the thermal stability of the rice bran extract (RBE) and analyze the effect of RBE on the shelf-life of sunflower oil and the quality characteristics and shelf-life of baked cake. The thermal stability of RBE was evaluated by a Rancimat test using sunflower oil. Properties such as moisture content, porosity...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
RNA extraction using spin columns is a time-consuming bottleneck of the PCR-based COVID -19 diagnosis process [1]. Spin column based RNA extraction requires the use of a centrifuge for solid phase extraction. Centrifugation also increases the risk of exposure to infectious particles. The auto extraction units available for simultaneous RNA extracti...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Scrub typhus (ST) is a febrile illness in human caused by intracellular bacterium Orientia tsutsugamushi (OT). OT is transmitted to humans via a chigger bite leaving an eschar at the bite site. High genotypic diversity of OT is a major obstacle in developing diagnostics and vaccines. Little is known regarding OT genotypes in Sri Lanka (SL). Present...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Scrub typhus (ST) is an acute febrile illness in human caused by obligate intracellular Gram-negative bacterium Orientia tsutsugamushi (OT). OT exploits white blood cells during infection. Previous studies in mouse models showed that OT infection alter host lipid metabolism. Therefore, current study was focused to investigate the changes in the fat...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coconut paring is the brownish outer layer of the coconut kernel, which is removed when desiccated coconut is produced. Coconut Paring Residue (CPR) is the residue remaining after expulsion of coconut oil from the coconut parings. The present study was conducted to evaluate the potential of the ethanolic extract of CPR as an antioxidant mixture cap...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Antioxidants in the body can reduce oxidative stress. Reports indicate that medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs) absorb small polar drug molecules. Coconut oil has a high percentage of MCFAs. Our previous studies indicate that coconut oil enhances the absorption of antioxidants such as caffeic acid in rats and chlorogenic acid in humans. The present st...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Traditional medicine may provide leads for potential new therapeutics. Sri Lanka is home to numerous plant species with reported anti-cancer properties according to traditional medical practices. Further, polyphenolic compounds extracted from various plant products have been reported to exhibit antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticancer activity...
Poster
Full-text available
With the advancement of nanotechnology, the wide range of applicability of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in various fields has resulted in an increasing demand for the use of AgNPs. However, amidst being viewed as a frontier in the medical sector with potential anti-cancer activity, AgNPs can also exert negative impacts on living systems. Thus, the...
Presentation
Full-text available
Most antioxidants have poor bioavailability. They are difficult for humans to absorb and once absorbed they are readily metabolized and eliminated from the body. Uptake of polyphenolic antioxidants can be enhanced by modulating passive paracellular permeation through the intestinal tight junctions. Certain Fatty acids have the ability to modulate t...
Preprint
Full-text available
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative pathogen for the novel COVID-19 disease. SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) is responsible for viral replication and host innate immunity suppression. Thus, this study aimed to explore potential phytochemical inhibitors against this dual therapeutic target using...
Preprint
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative pathogen for the novel COVID-19 disease. SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) is responsible for viral replication and host innate immunity suppression. Thus, this study aimed to explore potential phytochemical inhibitors against this dual therapeutic target using...
Article
Full-text available
The effect of a mainly polyunsaturated oil (soybean oil) and a mainly medium chain triglyceride oil (coconut oil) on the absorption of the phenolic antioxidant chlorogenic acid (5-caffeoylquinic acid) was investigated using 90 healthy volunteers. Serum concentrations and the absorbed percentages of chlorogenic acid of volunteers who received chloro...
Presentation
Full-text available
Acid value and peroxide value are quality parameters of edible oils, which indicate the freshness of oils. Free fatty acids and peroxides can be removed from coconut oil and other edible oils by various refining methods. When the free fatty acids and peroxides are removed from coconut oil by refining, both fresh and used coconut oils or oils with e...
Article
Full-text available
We investigated the effect of the chain length and the degree of saturation of fatty acids in dietary triglycerides on serum lipid profiles and hepatic lipid metabolism in Wistar rats. Fat component of the basal diet (soybean oil) was replaced with fats with fatty acids of different chain lengths and saturation and the serum lipids were monitored f...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Severe dengue (SD), experienced by only a fraction of dengue patients, can be lethal. Due to the lack of early markers that can predict the evolution of SD, all dengue patients have to be monitored under hospital care. We discovered early oxidative stress markers of SD to identify patients who can benefit from early intervention before...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Dengue presents a wide clinical spectrum. Most patients recover following a self-limiting non-severe clinical course. A small proportion of patients progress to severe disease, mostly characterized by plasma leakage with or without hemorrhage. Early symptoms of severe dengue (SD) are similar to those of non-severe dengue fever (DF). Se...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Severe dengue (SD), experienced by only a fraction of dengue patients can be lethal. Due to lack of early markers that can predict the evolution of SD, all dengue patients have to be monitored under hospital care. We discovered early oxidative stress markers of SD to identify patients who can benefit from early intervention before the sy...
Article
Full-text available
The aqueous extract of scraped coconut kernel is known as coconut milk. Coconut milk preparations are also commercially available in the form of desiccated powders or liquids. While these various coconut milk preparations are heavily used in cooking in the Asian countries as a major source of dietary fat, limited studies have been conducted on thei...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus which place 50% of the world population at risk for contracting the disease of which approximately 5% may develop severe symptoms. Sri Lanka reports over 50000 dengue cases annually. While patients with non-severe symptoms may recover from home those who develop severe sym...
Article
Full-text available
Coconut oil meal, a cheap by-product of coconut oil production, is a rich source of phenolic antioxidants. Many age-related diseases are caused by reactive oxygen species- (ROS-) induced damage to macromolecules such as lipids, proteins, and DNA. In the present study, the protective effect of the phenolic extract of coconut oil meal (CMPE) against...
Preprint
div>Dietary fatty acids are associated with lipid health. We investigated the effect of the chain length and the degree of saturation of fatty acids in dietary triglycerides on serum lipid profiles and hepatic lipid metabolism in Wistar rats. Fat component of the basal diet (soybean oil) was replaced with fats with fatty acids of different ch...
Article
Full-text available
Phenolic extracts of coconut oil meal (CME) and sesame oil meal (SME) were compared with synthetic antioxidants for the potential of improving shelf life of vanilla cake. CME maintained hexanal (product of chemical spoilage) levels below 0.3 mg/kg in cake up to 14 days. BHT- and SME-added cakes maintained hexanal levels below 2 mg/kg, while control...
Preprint
Full-text available
Phenolic extracts of coconut oil meal (CME) and sesame oil meal (SME) were compared with synthetic antioxidants for the potential of improving shelf life of vanilla cake. CME maintained hexanal (product of chemical spoilage) levels below 0.3 mg/kg in cake up to 14 days. BHT and SME-added cakes maintained hexanal levels below 2 mg/kg while control c...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Dengue presents a wide clinical spectrum including asymptomatic dengue fever (DF) or severe forms, such as dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and dengue shock syndrome (DSS). Early symptoms of DHF are similar to those of non-life-threatening DF. Severe symptoms manifest after 3-5 days of fever, which can be life threatening due to lack of pr...
Preprint
p> Phenolic extracts of coconut oil meal (CME) and sesame oil meal (SME) were compared with synthetic antioxidants for the potential of improving shelf life of vanilla cake. CME maintained hexanal (product of chemical spoilage) levels below 0.3 mg/kg in cake up to 14 days. BHT- and SME-added cakes maintained hexanal levels below 2 mg/kg while cont...
Conference Paper
Dengue fever is caused by a flavivirus transmitted by mosquitoes. Primary infection of dengue mostly causes mild dengue fever (DF) characterized by headache, retro orbital pain, body pain, nausea, vomiting, joint pains and weakness. Severe manifestations of dengue, dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and dengue shock syndrome (DSS) also shows similar sy...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Rice bran extract is rich in antioxidants which can preserve food by retarding the oxidation of fat or oils. There is a huge interest for using natural antioxidants as food preservatives over synthetic antioxidants. The objective of this study is to determine the effect of using phenolic antioxidant extracts of rice bran (RBE) on improving the shel...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coconut milk is the aqueous extract of coconut endosperm used as a major source of fat in culinary applications. Now-a-days, blended (machine-pressed) coconut milk (BCM) or commercial coconut milk products such as liquid coconut milk (LCM) and powdered coconut milk (PCM) are used in place of hand-pressed coconut milk. Coconut milk is rich in polyph...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coconut oil meal (poonac) is a rich source of phenolic antioxidants. In most of the reported research, antioxidant activities of phenolic extracts have been tested using chemical systems. However, similar studies conducted in biological systems is relatively less common. In this study, glutathione oxidation and mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA) damage in...
Conference Paper
Dengue is the most common flaviviral disease transmitted by mosquitoes in the endemic areas. Dengue can manifest clinical symptoms ranging from mild dengue fever (DF) to severe dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and dengue shock syndrome (DSS). Dengue patients present with symptoms of hemorrhagic manifestations only after 3-5 days from fever onset. Lac...
Poster
Full-text available
Dengue is the most prevalent arboviral disease transmitted by mosquitoes common in tropical areas of the world. Lack of proper medication or vaccines for dengue fever and inability to distinguish severe cases of dengue fever (DF), dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) during the early stages of infection, renders this disease life threatening for people l...
Poster
Full-text available
Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease characterized by a mild febrile illness as dengue fever (DF) and severe stage of illness as dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and dengue shock syndrome that can lead to mortality. Early clinical management is critical for preventing mortality. Virus-induced activation of phagocytes is associated with oxidative stress...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Diets rich in saturated fatty acids have long been associated with increased serum cholesterol concentrations and hence increased risk of cardiovascular disease. To evaluate the effect on serum lipid profile and regulation of genes involved in lipid metabolism by different amounts of saturated fat with varying fatty acid chain lengths, we harvested...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coconut cake, a by-product of coconut oil manufacturing is a rich source of phenolic antioxidants. Majority of research dealing with phenolic antioxidants is primarily focused on the extraction of phenolic substances from plant materials and assessment of antioxidant properties in chemical systems. However, such assays in chemical systems do not gu...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
miRNAs are small non-coding RNA that are known to regulate gene expression at transcription level. Altered expression levels of miRNAs due to the infections can serve as clinically relevant biomarkers. Reproducible and efficient recovery of miRNA from biological samples is important for their reliable quantification. Therefore, we compared the reco...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The use of both domestic coconut milk (CM) preparations and commercially available CM preparations in cooking has become popular. In our previous studies, we found that the fat content and the antioxidant capacity vary among different preparations of CM. The present study involves comparing the effect of domestic blended CM (BCM), commercially avai...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Psidium guineense Sw. leaf (PGL) and coconut cake (CC) are identified as potential sources of natural antioxidants with antioxidant activities comparable to that of many synthetic antioxidants. However, to the best of our knowledge, the antioxidant activities have not been reported in animal models . The effects of orally feeding PGL and CC extract...
Article
Full-text available
Cardiac hypertrophy, as a response to hemodynamic stress, is associated with cardiac dysfunction and death, but whether hypertrophy itself represents a pathological process remains unclear. Hypertrophy is driven by changes in myocardial gene expression that require the MEF2 family of DNA-binding transcription factors, as well as the nuclear lysine...
Article
Full-text available
Background Melioidosis is a life threatening infectious disease caused by the gram-negative bacillus Burkholderia pseudomallei predominantly found in southeast Asia and northern Australia. Studying the host transcription profiles in response to infection is crucial for understanding disease pathogenesis and correlates of disease severity, which may...
Data
mRNA expression in PBMC’s of diabetic melioidosis cases (n = 20) compared to non-diabetic melioidosis cases (n = 10). (DOCX)