Shikha Agnihotry’s research while affiliated with Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences and other places

Aromatherapy is a medical practice that uses aromatic compounds or essential oils to influence mood and health. Essential oils used in aromatherapy are created from a wide variety of medicinal plants, flowers, herbs, roots, and trees that are found all over the world and have significant, well-documented benefits on enhancing physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. This book is a comprehensive reference on aromatic compounds present in essential oils and their therapeutic use. Starting from fundamentals of essential oil biosynthesis the book guides the reader through their basic biochemistry, toxicology, profiling, blending and clinical applications. The concluding chapters also present focused information about the therapeutic effects of essential oils on specific physiological systems, plant sources, skin treatment and cancer therapeutics. The combination of basic and applied knowledge will provide readers with all the necessary information for understanding how to develop preclinical formulations and standard clinical therapies with essential oils. This is an essential reference for anyone interested in aromatherapy and the science of essential oils.

Aromatherapy is a medical practice that uses aromatic compounds or essential oils to influence mood and health. Essential oils used in aromatherapy are created from a wide variety of medicinal plants, flowers, herbs, roots, and trees that are found all over the world and have significant, well-documented benefits on enhancing physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. This book is a comprehensive reference on aromatic compounds present in essential oils and their therapeutic use. Starting from fundamentals of essential oil biosynthesis the book guides the reader through their basic biochemistry, toxicology, profiling, blending and clinical applications. The concluding chapters also present focused information about the therapeutic effects of essential oils on specific physiological systems, plant sources, skin treatment and cancer therapeutics. The combination of basic and applied knowledge will provide readers with all the necessary information for understanding how to develop preclinical formulations and standard clinical therapies with essential oils. This is an essential reference for anyone interested in aromatherapy and the science of essential oils.

Aromatherapy is a medical practice that uses aromatic compounds or essential oils to influence mood and health. Essential oils used in aromatherapy are created from a wide variety of medicinal plants, flowers, herbs, roots, and trees that are found all over the world and have significant, well-documented benefits on enhancing physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. This book is a comprehensive reference on aromatic compounds present in essential oils and their therapeutic use. Starting from fundamentals of essential oil biosynthesis the book guides the reader through their basic biochemistry, toxicology, profiling, blending and clinical applications. The concluding chapters also present focused information about the therapeutic effects of essential oils on specific physiological systems, plant sources, skin treatment and cancer therapeutics. The combination of basic and applied knowledge will provide readers with all the necessary information for understanding how to develop preclinical formulations and standard clinical therapies with essential oils. This is an essential reference for anyone interested in aromatherapy and the science of essential oils.

Proteins are very flexible biomolecules. The accurate knowledge of protein structure is very important from its functional point of view. In protein structure prediction, the three-dimensional structure of a protein is modeled from its amino acid sequence using knowledge-based approaches. Computational algorithms and tools have made significant improvements in the field of structural modeling. Protein structure prediction methods include comparative modeling (homology modeling), threading, and ab initio approach. Several tools and software have been developed for the 3D modeling of proteins. Each protein modeling methods have certain limitations that should be kept in mind while selecting a tool for structure modeling. The structural details of X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy-verified protein structures guide the development of modeling software and also useful in assessing the accuracy of the protein model.

Background & Objective: The basic abnormality of Wilson Disease (WD) is the improper excretion of copper through bile that results to copper accumulation and damage of tissue, firstly within the liver and then other organs including brain eventually. Excess dietary intake of copper cause disturbance in regulatory pathways. This excess copper enhances free radical production that results to oxidative stress and cellular damage. The study designed to identify the possible safe dose of copper in dietary intake for safeguard of human beings.

Computer-aided drug designing (CADD) relates to drug discovery, also characterized as a cost-effective and active tool that manages or creates theoretical models that would be used by large databases for discovery and virtual screening. Till now, several algorithms have been developed and managed through CADD to study different prospects like protein structure and function prediction, identification of ligands interaction, residues of the active site, and study of protein–ligand interactions, which possibly leads to the discovery of newer therapeutic agents or drugs. As per in terms of new medicine discovery, designing and binding of small molecules (ligand) with DNA, RNA, or protein (target) is the key step, defined as docking. Docking actively identifies specific hit from large data libraries through simple rigid or flexible docking approaches with the receptor to maximize hit rates in virtual screening. The calculated scores of free energy of binding (poses) define the active compounds involved in interactions. Different new prospects in docking programs are now being used that more focuses accuracy on molecular interaction energy calculation without stringent parameters. The quantum-chemical methods, implicit solvent models, and new global optimization algorithms are now being used to improve flexibility and mobility of ligands and proteins, respectively. This chapter presents some basic algorithms, molecular docking programs based on rigid and flexible receptor/ligand-based on various machine learning techniques used in CADD and molecular docking.

Background & objectives: For bacterial community analysis, 16S rRNA sequences are subjected to taxonomic classification through comparison with one of the three commonly used databases [Greengenes, SILVA and Ribosomal Database Project (RDP)]. It was hypothesized that a unified database containing fully annotated, non-redundant sequences from all the three databases, might provide better taxonomic classification during analysis of 16S rRNA sequence data. Hence, a unified 16S rRNA database was constructed and its performance was assessed by using it with four different taxonomic assignment methods, and for data from various hypervariable regions (HVRs) of 16S rRNA gene. Methods: We constructed a unified 16S rRNA database (16S-UDb) by merging non-ambiguous, fully annotated, full-length 16S rRNA sequences from the three databases and compared its performance in taxonomy assignment with that of three original databases. This was done using four different taxonomy assignment methods [mothur Naïve Bayesian Classifier (mothur-nbc), RDP Naïve Bayesian Classifier (rdp-nbc), UCLUST, SortMeRNA] and data from 13 regions of 16S rRNA [seven hypervariable regions (HVR) (V2-V8) and six pairs of adjacent HVRs]. Results: Our unified 16S rRNA database contained 13,078 full-length, fully annotated 16S rRNA sequences. It could assign genus and species to larger proportions (90.05 and 46.82%, respectively, when used with mothur-nbc classifier and the V2+V3 region) of sequences in the test database than the three original 16S rRNA databases (70.88-87.20% and 10.23-24.28%, respectively, with the same classifier and region). Interpretation & conclusions: Our results indicate that for analysis of bacterial mixtures, sequencing of V2-V3 region of 16S rRNA followed by analysis of the data using the mothur-nbc classifier and our 16S-UDb database may be preferred.

Hepatic copper levels differ among patients with Wilson disease (WD) and normal individuals depending on the dietary intake, copper bioavailability, and genetic factors. Copper chloride (CuCl 2) caused dose-dependent reduction in cell viability of human teratocarcinoma (HepG2) cell line, measured using the 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Cells were exposed to different concentrations of CuCl 2 in log doses and maximum cell viability reduction was recorded at 15 µg/mL. Toxic dose of CuCl 2 is potent inducer of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Apoptosis as a pattern of cell death was confirmed through sub-G1 fraction and morphological changes such as mitochondrial depolarization, endoplasmic reticulum and lysosomal destabilization, phosphatidylserine translocation, and DNA damage. Our transcriptional and translational results strongly support apoptotic cell death. Using the available data present in dbSNP and bioinformatics tools, three nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) were identified as deleterious, reducing the stability of protein ATP7B. Structural analysis of native and mutant ATP7B proteins was investigated using molecular dynamics simulation (MDS) approach. Mutation in ATP7B gene might disturb the structural conformation and catalytic function of the ATP7B protein may be inducing WD. Hence, excess dietary intake of copper chloride must be avoided for safety of health to prevent from WD. K E Y W O R D S apoptosis, ATP7B, DNA damage, oxidative stress, Wilson disease