Drought stress, which causes a decline in quality and quantity of crop yields, has become more accentuated these days due to climatic change. Serious measures need to be taken to increase the tolerance of crop plants to acute drought conditions likely to occur due to global warming. Drought stress causes many physiological and biochemical changes in plants, rendering the maintenance of osmotic adjustment highly crucial. The degree of plant resistance to drought varies with plant species and cultivars, phenological stages of the plant, and the duration of plant exposure to the stress. Osmoregulation in plants under low water potential relies on synthesis and accumulation of osmoprotectants or osmolytes such as soluble proteins, sugars, and sugar alcohols, quaternary ammonium compounds, and amino acids, like proline. This review highlights the role of osmolytes in water-stressed plants and of enzymes entailed in their metabolism. It will be useful, especially for researchers working on the development of drought-resistant crops by using the metabolic-engineering techniques.

This article discusses the titanium (Ti)-based permanganate advanced catalytic oxidation process (ACOP) for the possible recovery of thousands of tons of dye wastewater. The heterogeneous catalyst TiO 2 in the solid state employed in the liquid phase reaction mixture with dye and potassium permanganate was recovered and reused several times for reproducible results. The kinetics were examined at various operational parameters like the effect of dyes, the effect of oxidants, the amount of catalysts, and the effect of acids, temperature, and various organic and inorganic additives used in the textile industry. The kinetics of advanced oxidation and the mechanism of dye de-coloration and degradation were monitored using the Congo red (CR) dye as a model in an aqueous medium and then applied to other dyes and real dye wastewater samples. The color removal was up to 98%, with the removal efficiency being linear with the dose at a particular time. This method could exhibit the complete color removal of the dye wastewater, leading to mineralization coupled with a change in the oxidation state of Mn from +7 to +2. The method also improved the BOD/COD ratio, followed by an increase in the salinity of the recycled water. This indicated that this method can be used not only for the highly efficient decolorization of dye wastewater but also as a preliminary step for the utilization of the dye wastewater after its recycling. The newly developed system was proven to be very cost-effective and eco-friendly with low sludge quantity, which contained numerous nitrogenous compounds, and this was validated by FTIR and HPLC analyses; thus, the system may be used in treatment plants for the recovery of wastewater.

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Aim: In this study, we evaluated the effect of selected polymorphisms of mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt) pathway in 500 head and neck cancer (HNC) patients and 500 healthy controls from Pakistan. Materials & methods: The experiments were conducted using tetra-ARMS PCR followed by DNA sequencing. Results: Multivariate analysis showed that AA genotype of rs3782116 showed fivefold, GG genotype of rs6598072 approximately twofold and CC genotype of rs4946936 and TT genotype of rs12212067 showed twofold increased risk of HNC. Furthermore, haplotype analysis showed that certain haplotypes of UPRmt pathway single nucleotide polymorphisms have significant association with increased HNC risk. Conclusion: These results show that genetic aberrations in UPRmt pathway genes have association with increased HNC risk and can be an indicator of advance clinical outcome especially invasion and metastasis.