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Glomalin is abundant in soils and is closely correlated with aggregate water stability. Glomalin contains carbon and, hence, constitutes a non-trivial portion of the terrestrial carbon pool. Possibly far more importantly, however, stabilization of aggregates amplifies the role of glomalin in soils because carbonaceous compounds are protected from degradation inside of aggregates. Increased atmospheric CO2 can lead to increased production of glomalin because of the symbiotic association that exists between plants and producers of glomalin, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Glomalin concentrations in soils are influenced by management practices, for example, in agroecosystems, further highlighting the role of this protein in carbon storage. Glomalin is an unusual molecule that has proven difficult to analyze biochemically due to its recalcitrance and complexity. Future research will be directed towards the elucidation of its structure and controls on its production.

Thirteen parental lines were crossed in line X tester fashion comprising 10 lines and 3 testers at vegetable farm Banaras Hindu University Varanasi to estimate combining ability in tomato for fruit yield, yield components and fruit quality traits. F₁ and parents were grown in towards four and half meters in randomized block design with three replications during winter-2010 involvement of both additive and non additive gene action was operated for the control of fruits per plant, fruit weight and average fruit weight. All the fruit quality characters like, total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity, ascorbic acid and lycopene of the fruit were governed by non additive gene action. In most of the traits, over-dominance was predominant. The analysis of components of genetic variance for yield components showed that the main part of genetic variance was due to additive effect. Estimation of general combining ability (GCA) for yield and earliness showed that Pant T-3 had the highest GCA for increasing yield and Punjab Upma had the highest GCA for both earliness and average fruit weight. Cross combination CO-3 X Azad T-5 exhibit significant specific combining ability (SCA) for the most of desirable traits among all cross combinations

Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) leads to considerable morbidity and mortality among hospitalized patients. Faecal specimens from 1110 hospitalized patients suspected for CDI were cultured for isolation of C. difficile and characterization of virulence genes. PCR was carried out for toxigenic genes tcdA, tcdB, cdtA and cdtB and PCR-RFLP for fliC and slpA genes. Of 174 (15.7 %) C. difficile isolates, 121 (69.5 %) were toxigenic, amongst which 68 (56.2 %) also had both tcdA and tcdB genes. The remaining 53 (43.8 %) of the isolates also had at least one of the toxin genes. Binary toxin genes (cdtA and cdtB) with only one of the two components were present in 16 (9.2 %) of the 174 isolates. The other virulence genes -fliC and slpA -were present in 100 % of the isolates. The most frequent PCR-RFLP type of fliC gene was type I (n5101), followed by type VII (n549) and type III (n524). The slpA gene presented with three combinations of patterns. Characterization of virulence genes in C. difficile isolates is of extreme importance for epidemiological surveillance and control of outbreaks owing to the capacity of this bacterium to adapt to new environmental circumstances, leading to the emergence of new epidemic strains.

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