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Ebola virus (EBOV), a non-segmented single-stranded RNA virus, is often-most transmitted through body fluids like sweat, tears, saliva, and nasal secretions. Till date, there is no licensed vaccine of EBOV is available in the market; however, the world is increasingly vulnerable to this emerging threat. Hence, it is the need of time to develop a vaccine for EBOV to hinder its dissemination. The current study has been designed for identification and characterization of the potential B and T-cell epitopes using the Immuno-informatics tools, and it helped in finding the potent vaccine candidates against EBOV. Prediction, antigenicity and allergenicity testing of predicted B and T cells' epitopes was done as well to identify their potential as a vaccine candidate and to measure their safety level respectively. Among B-cell epitopes "WIPAGIGVTGVIIA" showed a high antigenicity score and it would play an important role in evoking the immune response. In T-cell epitopes, peptides "AIGLAWIPY" and "IRGFPRCRY" presented high antigenicity score, which binds to MHC class-I and MHC class-II alleles respectively. All predicted epitopes were analyzed and compared with already reported peptides carefully. Comparatively, Peptides predicted in the present study showed more immunogenicity score than already reported peptides, used as positive control, and are more immunogenic as compared to them. Peptides reported in the present study do not target only Zaire EBOV (ZEBOV), as in previous studies, but also other species, i.e. Tai Forest EBOV (TAFV), Sudan EBOV (SUDV), Bundibugyo EBOV (BDBV), and Reston EBOV (RESTV) and would bring the promising results as potent vaccine candidates.

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Drug resistance is becoming alarming with the passage of time worldwide in general and in third world countries in particular. Human urine specimens of patients of urinary tract infection at Sheikh Zayed hospital, Lahore, Pakistan were analyzed for drug resistance in Escherichia coli. A total of 69 Escherichia coli isolates from human urine specimens were obtained and screened for their antibiograms. A total of seven antibiotic resistance profiles were obtained with over 65% of the isolates showing multi-drug resistance. Very high resistance levels were detected against augmentin and gentamicin (87.5 &77.5 % respectively) while imipenem and tazocin recorded the least resistance levels (32.5% and 12.5% respectively) among the isolates.

Black rice was characterized by dark purple pericarp and much lower yield than that of white rice varieties. We investigated the factors responsible for the lower yields of black rice by conducting crosses of rice with purple pericarp mutant and white pericarp cultivars. The seed weight of black rice was lower than that of brown or white rice progeny within the crosses. The F 2 segregants showed increased anthocyanin deposition with simultaneous reduction of chlorophyll in the seed pericarp. These results revealed that an unknown metabolic alteration exists in the chlorophyll synthesis due to the high level of cyanindin-3-0-glucoside deposition in the purple pericarp rice, indicating that anthocyanin deposition in the pericarp of black rice hindered the photosynthetic rate, leading to low yield. These findings suggest that the low yield of black rice is closely related to physiological factors other than the genetic yield traits.