Lipid is an important constituent of cell membrane. Membrane lipid composition of spermatozoa has been correlated to different function. Many researchers have related membrane lipid with survival success after cryopreservation or cold shock. Sperm maturation and acrosome reactions are natural phenomenon, but cryopreservation or cold shock is not. Therefore, sperm cells are not programmed for such change and undergo stress. So the change in membrane lipid composition due to cold shock or cryopreservation may be looked upon as response of spermatozoa to a certain stressed condition. A significant body of research worked on the relationship between membrane lipid and fatty acid composition and ability of cell to tolerate adverse change in temperature. However, as the approach of different research groups was different, it is very difficult to compare the changes. Studies have been done with different species, ejaculated/seminal or epididymal sperm. Lipid analyses have been done with whole cell membrane isolated by different methods. Fatty acids estimated were from whole cell, plasma membrane, head membrane, or phospholipids. The cryopreservation condition, media composition, and diluents/cryoprotectants were also different. At this onset a comprehensive review is needed to cover changes of sperm membrane lipid composition of different species under different cryopreservation conditions.

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In search of specific label-free biomarkers for differentiation of two oral lesions, namely oral leukoplakia (OLK) and oral squamous-cell carcinoma (OSCC), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was performed on paraffin-embedded tissue sections from 47 human subjects (eight normal (NOM), 16 OLK, and 23 OSCC). Difference between mean spectra (DBMS), Mann-Whitney's U test, and forward feature selection (FFS) techniques were used for optimising spectral-marker selection. Classification of diseases was performed with linear and quadratic support vector machine (SVM) at 10-fold cross-validation, using different combinations of spectral features. It was observed that six features obtained through FFS enabled differentiation of NOM and OSCC tissue (1782, 1713, 1665, 1545, 1409, and 1161 cm(-1)) and were most significant, able to classify OLK and OSCC with 81.3 % sensitivity, 95.7 % specificity, and 89.7 % overall accuracy. The 43 spectral markers extracted through Mann-Whitney's U Test were the least significant when quadratic SVM was used. Considering the high sensitivity and specificity of the FFS technique, extracting only six spectral biomarkers was thus most useful for diagnosis of OLK and OSCC, and to overcome inter and intra-observer variability experienced in diagnostic best-practice histopathological procedure. By considering the biochemical assignment of these six spectral signatures, this work also revealed altered glycogen and keratin content in histological sections which could able to discriminate OLK and OSCC. The method was validated through spectral selection by the DBMS technique. Thus this method has potential for diagnostic cost minimisation for oral lesions by label-free biomarker identification.

The concentration of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, has been increasing in the atmosphere due to various anthropogenic activities. This review aims at summarizing different organisms, including eukaryotes and prokaryotes that have the ability to assimilate CO2. In addition, the metabolic pathway via which an organism sequesters CO2 is explained in brief. The adaptations of different organisms for efficient CO2 sequestration have also been explained in the current review. An important advantage of applying biological systems to manage CO2 is that it synthesizes industrially useful byproducts such as bioplastics, medicinal compounds, and biofuels. Hence, this review helps in understanding diverse biological systems that can be utilized to develop a sustainable technology to mitigate CO2 at an industrial level. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38: 127–136, 2019

Fish, being a good source of nutrients, is often cooked by different methods before consumption, which affect the beneficial quality detrimentally. In this study, Catla catla, and mustard oil are selected as representative of fish and cooking oil for frying, respectively, because of their agricultural importance and worldwide demand. Extensive experiments are performed varying the effective processing variables of conventional frying viz., temperature (140 °C‐240 °C), time (5 min–20 min) and oil amount (25 ml/kg of fish‐100 ml/kg of fish) to correlate the drastic reduction of the nutritional quality indices, that is, ω‐3/ω‐6 and cis/trans‐fatty acids (FAs) profiles of fish after frying. To establish a nonlinear correlation between these inputs and outputs, an exhaustive search of all available artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms and activation functions is executed for the development of a model. The hybrid robust process approach integrating ANN with differential evolution (DE) and simulated annealing (SA) are employed to optimize the cooking parameters for regaining nutritional impact. After frying ω‐3/ω‐6 and cis/trans‐FAs ratio deteriorated by 76.65% and 92.68%, respectively, than the fresh samples. The ANN‐DE and ANN‐SA formalism efficiently enhanced these nutritional parameters up to 33.18% and 79%, respectively. Practical applications The present study applied artificial neural network (ANN) as an advanced alternative modeling tool to propose a generalized nonlinear correlation between temperature, time, oil amount, and nutritional values, that is, ω‐3/ω‐6 and cis/trans‐fatty acids (FAs) profiles of fried fish. Frying time provided a strong impact on food nutrition compared to other two input variables. Frying process detrimentally affected both the nutritional indices, that is, ω‐3/ω‐6 and cis/trans‐FAs profiles. The meta‐heuristic, stochastic optimization algorithms, namely differential evolution and simulated annealing along with ANN‐based processed model were implemented successfully to tune the cooking parameters, so that food quality indices of fish improved again to maximum value. The artificial intelligence modeling, along with optimizing methodology based parameters tuning approach described here is generic and can be advantageously extended to other experimentation of food process engineering. Besides, the finding of this study will benefit common people also.

Experiments were carried out to investigate the cryoprotecting potential of dextrans (ranging from 10 to 2000 kDa) using a synthetic model system developed recently in this laboratory. Goat spermatozoa from the cauda epididymidis were extracted in a chemically defined medium (modified Ringer's solution) and assayed for motility using a phase-contrast microscope. The sperm cells were subjected to a freezing protocol in a computer-controlled biofreezer (cooling at 0.25 degrees C min(-1) to 5 degrees C; 5 degrees C min(-1) to -20 degrees C; 20 degrees C min(-1) to -100 degrees C) and plunged into liquid nitrogen. The frozen cells were thawed rapidly at 37 degrees C in a thermostatic waterbath. In the absence of dextran, all the spermatozoa lost their motility. The cryoprotecting efficacy of each dextran was found to be biphasic in nature. Initially, as the concentration of dextran was increased, the recovery of sperm motility also increased and reached an optimum value; however, with further increases in dextran concentration, the recovery of motility decreased sharply. Of all the sugar polymers tested, 10 kDa dextran showed the highest cryoprotecting efficacy, whereas the 2000 kDa sugar polymer was the least active. Dextrans of 10, 40, 73, 173, 252, 500 and 2000 kDa offered maximum cryorecovery of forward motility to the extent of approximately 23%, 21%, 19%, 18%, 16%, 15% and 8%, respectively. Optimum concentrations of these dextrans for cryoprotection of sperm motility were 8.42, 2.50, 1.09, 0.37, 0.31, 0.10 and 0.04 mmol l(-1), respectively. It thus appears that each dextran has a characteristic cryoprotection profile. The data show that the cryoprotecting efficacy and optimum cryoprotecting concentrations of dextrans are inversely related to their molecular mass. Dextran also served as a significant cryoprotectant in the presence of glycerol (0.87 mol l(-1)) and dimethyl sulphoxide (0.76 mol l(-1)), which are well known cryoprotectants; the action of the combined cryoprotectants was almost additive. The presence of glycerol or glycerol plus dimethyl sulphoxide caused a significant reduction (from 8.42 to 6.27 mmol l(-1)) in the optimum concentration of dextran. In the presence of the three cryoprotectants, recovery of sperm motility was as high as 58% (forward motility) and 60% (total motility).

Bioremediation of wastewater is gaining popularity over chemical treatment due to the greener aspect. The volume of literature containing algal biodegradation is small. Especially, removal of toxic materials like phenol from coke-oven wastewater using fast-growing cyanobacteria was not tried. The current study, therefore, targeted at bioremediation of phenol from wastewater using sp., a cyanobacterial strain, as a finishing step. Furthermore, the growth of the strain was studied under different conditions, varying phenol concentration 50-150 mg/L, pH 5-11, inoculum size 2-10% to assess its ability to produce lipid. The strain was initially grown in BG-11 as a reference medium and later in phenolic solution. The strain was found to sustain 150 mg/L concentration of phenol. SEM study had shown the clear difference in the structure of cyanobacterial strain when grown in pure BG-11 medium and phenolic solution. Maximum removal of phenol (98.5 ± 0.14%) was achieved with an initial concentration 100 mg/L, 5% inoculum size at pH 11, while the maximum amount of dry biomass (0.38 ± 0.02 g/L) was obtained at pH 7, initial phenol concentration of 50 mg/L, and 5% inoculum size. Highest lipid yield was achieved at pH 11, initial phenol concentration of 100 mg/L, and 5% inoculum size. Coke-oven wastewater collected from secondary clarifier of effluent treatment plant was also treated with the said strain and the removal of different pollutants was observed. The study suggests the utilization of such potential cyanobacterial strain in treating industrial effluent containing phenol.