Mastitis is the most prevalent disease of dairy animals, imparting huge economic losses to the dairy industry. There is always a dire need to monitor the prevalence of mastitis, its bacteriology, and evaluation of antimicrobial susceptibilities for mastitis control and prevention. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to investigate: (i) the prevalence of mastitis in cattle and buffaloes; (ii) identification of bacteria associated with mastitis; (iii) antimicrobial susceptibility of bacterial isolates. Milk samples (n = 1,566) from cattle (n = 1,096) and buffaloes (n = 470) were processed for detection of mastitis using the California mastitis test in the year 2018–19. A total of 633 mastitic milk samples were further processed for bacteriology and antimicrobial susceptibility testing by the disc diffusion method. Overall, the prevalence of clinical and subclinical mastitis was 17 and 57% in both species. Clinical mastitis was higher in cattle (20%) compared to buffaloes (11%), whereas subclinical was higher in buffaloes (66%) than cattle (53%). Besides, month-wise prevalence was higher in hot and humid months in both species. Staphylococci spp. (34%) were the most predominant bacterial isolates from mastitic milk, followed by Escherichia coli (19.4%), Streptococci spp. (9%), and Klebsiella spp. (8%). Most of the bacteria were susceptible to gentamicin (92%) and enrofloxacin (88%), when a panel of 16 different antimicrobials was tested. Nevertheless, most of the isolates were resistant to sulphamethoxazole (99%), lincomycin (98%), oxytetracycline (89%), ampicillin (86%), and doxycycline (85%). This study concludes a high prevalence of mastitis caused by Staphylococcal spp. in cattle and buffaloes belonging to the northwest of Pakistan, and gentamicin and enrofloxacin might be appropriate antimicrobial agents in the treatment of bovine mastitis.
Neurological disorders (NDs) are recognized as one of the major health concerns globally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), neurological disorders are one of the main causes of mortality worldwide. Neurological disorders include Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson′s disease, Huntington′s disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Frontotemporal dementia, Prion disease, Brain tumor, Spinal cord injury, and Stroke. These diseases are considered incurable diseases because no specific therapies are available to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and reach the brain in a significant amount for the pharmacological effect in the brain. There is a need for the development of strategies that can improve the efficacy of drugs and circumvent BBB. One of the promising approaches is the use of different types of nano-scale materials. These nano-based drugs have the ability to increase the therapeutic effect, reduce toxicity, exhibit good stability, targeted delivery, and drug loading capacity. Different types and shapes of nanomaterials have been widely used for the treatment of neurological disorders, including quantum dots, dendrimers, metallic nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, liposomes, and micelles. These nanoparticles have unique characteristics, including sensitivity, selectivity, and the ability to cross the BBB when used in nano-sized particles, and are widely used for imaging studies and treatment of NDs. In this review, we briefly summarized the recent literature on the use of various nanomaterials and their mechanism of action for the treatment of various types of neurological disorders.
Single cell proteins (SCP) are the edible dead, dry cells of microorganisms that can be used as protein source in human food and animal feed, either as whole living cell or in dried form. Microbial species of yeast, fungi and bacteria that are Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), can be used as a source of single cell protein. Inexpensive microbial growth culture components can be utilized as source of carbon and energy to grow these microorganisms as biomass, amino acids or protein source. Besides being used as food or feed supplement, single cell protein strains have diverse range of properties, as it can eradicate pathogenic microorganism from human or animal gut either by competition with available nutrient sources or by producing enzymes or metabolites with antimicrobial activities. Due to increase in population around the globe, the global demand for high-quality protein rich foods have increased. Novel approaches for alternative sources are needed to meet the global challenges. SCP strains with capacity to produce cell wall degrading enzymes and metabolites with antimicrobial activity can play a major role to meet the global food demand. Poultry farming of broiler and layer is already playing an important role to meet the need of protein in the developing world. However, high nucleic acid content, un-digestible cell wall, unacceptable flavors and colors and high contamination rate are the certain limitations that need further attention.
Background: Among prokaryotes, Actinomycetes are one of the most explored microorganism due to their capability of novel bioactive secondary metabolites production. Actinomycetes secondary metabolites are known for their role in different cellular, physiological and biological processes. Main body: Actinomycetes are most widely distributed in natural ecosystem habitats such as soil, hypersaline soil, rhizosphere soil, freshwater, limestone, volcanic cave, marine sediments, sponges, and desert. Actinomycetes bioactive secondary metabolites most important features are that they have specific microbial producers, diverse bioactivities and unique chemical structures. Some important antibiotics produced by actinomycetes are actinomycetin, mycetin, micromonosporin and from actinomyces are lysozyme, actinomycin, streptothricin, proactinomycin and streptomycin. These antibiotics differ greatly in their structure, antimicrobial and toxicity properties. Actinomycetes secondary metabolites include spirotetronate, quinones, lactams, aminoglycosides, β-lactams, diketones, aromatic ketones, ansamycin, glycopeptides, lactones, Tetracenediones, anthracyclines, macrolides, fattiviracins, polyenes and tetracyclines, natural polycyclic polyketide. Conclusion: This review study summarized that Actinomycetes are naturally distributed species found in diverse environments. It is assumed that actinomycetes species found in extreme conditions have the capability to produce novel bioactive secondary metabolites that remain unexplored yet.
Antibiotic resistance issue is really unavoidable, increased due to decrease in production of novel secondary metabolites production. Actinomycetes have the potential to produce biological active compounds used as an antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, antiprotozoal, antihelminthic, anticholesterol, anticancer, immunosuppressant, pesticides and herbicides. Current research study was design to assess actinomycetes for production secondary metabolites. For this purpose different soil samples were collected and with help of dilution method, actinomycetes were grown on enrichment. Actinomycetes were morphologically analysed under microscope and molecularly through PCR and 16S-rRNA gene-amplification. After confirmation, actinomycetes were grown on LB and GMC media have potential to produce bioactive secondary metabolites. Current research study results that actinomycetes have potential to produce bioactive secondary metabolites. LB-media is the best suitable-medium for growth of actinomycetes and bioactive secondarymetabolites production. It is suggested that actinomycetes strains from various environment should be assessed for novel bioactive secondary metabolites.
Islamabad is essentially the only well-planned city in Pakistan, but groundwater depletion has become a serious issue there because of the rapid increase in population, poor water management, and deforestation. The current water demand of the city is about 220 million gallons per day, with the Capital Development Authority (CDA) providing up to 70 million gallons per day. The need for water is mostly fulfilled through groundwater sources, such as water bores and commercial tube wells. Hence, identifying recharge sites for natural aquifers is a significant component of groundwater required to overcome the water crisis. Therefore, this study aims to identify potential sites for natural aquifer recharge by using analytical hierarchy process (AHP), weighted linear combination (WLC), and fuzzy logic methods. To achieve the stated objective, seven local influencing factors including soil, slope, water table, population density, land use land cover (LULC), drainage density, and elevation have been utilized in this study. AHP was utilized for the evaluation of the relative importance of the above-mentioned factors, while fuzzy logic was applied for the standardization of these factors. Finally, the AHP-WLC and fuzzy logic approaches were used to merge factor maps in order to identify suitable sites for natural aquifer recharge in Islamabad City. Two different suitability maps were constructed from both techniques, and on each of the resulting maps, the subregions were categorized into five classes: not suitable, less suitable, moderate, suitable, and most suitable. Based on the AHP-WLC results, 5% of the whole study area is deemed most suitable for natural aquifer recharge (NAR), whereas from the fuzzy logic results, 10% of the study area is marked as most suitable. In contrast, 37% and 32% of the whole study area were identified as suitable by the AHP-WLC and fuzzy logic methods, respectively. While both techniques can obtain satisfactory outcomes, the suitability map from fuzzy logic has produced more precise results. Hence, we propose to CDA-Islamabad here different sites for recharge wells based on the results of fuzzy logic. As recommended by this study, to date CDA has constructed twelve recharge wells.
Rainwater harvesting is an important step towards maximizing the water availability and land productivity in arid and semi-arid areas. The present study shows that the area of Ghazi Tehsil within Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan, has great potential for rainwater harvesting due to its feasible climatic and topographic conditions. This area of 348 km2 normally receives high rainfall annually, but, due to hilly terrain, the bulk of rainwater is lost in the runoff process. In order to enhance agricultural output for such a large area, the practice of rainwater harvesting is a sustainable and decisive approach. However, the selection of appropriate sites for rainwater harvesting on a large scale presents a critical challenge. In such areas, geospatial technology has proved very decisive in the identification of potential sites. In this study, we have used the HEC-GeoHMS tool (ArcGIS 9.3) to compute a curve number to represent the effects of rainfall against the hydrological soil group and landcover. Subsequently, the curve number was used as an input parameter in the soil conservation service runoff-curve number (SCS-CN) method to estimate surface runoff potential for different combinations of landcover and hydrological soil groups. It was observed that runoff was higher in mountainous areas and relatively low in plain areas. Finally, to identify the potential sites for rainwater harvesting, weighted overlay analysis-based related thematic map layers were further reclassified, and weights were assigned according to the technical guidelines of suggested international standards and under consideration of the study area’s topographic, hydrological, and climatic factors. As a result, about 20% of the area was found suitable, 52% less suitable, and 29% as not suitable. Furthermore, relative suitability was assigned to the results of suitable sites as an input for the identification of potential sites for different rainwater harvesting storage structures. These results show that 10% of the area was suitable for farm ponds, 5.74% for check dams, 21.5% for Nigarims, and 8.9% was found to be suitable for gully plugs. The comparison of our GIS-derived and field-based results spatially affirms that the analyzed results were agreeably overlaid in the context of spatial results for check dams, gully plugs, and Nigarims.
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