Arsenic (As), a potent environmental toxin, causes cardiac functional impairments. Ferulic acid (FA), a ubiquitous dietary hydroxycinnamate, exerts beneficial effects on human health. Hence, the present study investigated the effect of FA on myocardial oxidative stress parameters, ATP level, the status of cardiac cytoskeleton intermediate filaments—desmin and vimentin, and AMPK signaling proteins in As‐intoxicated rats. Wistar rats were administered orally with FA‐40 mg/kg and As‐5 mg/kg alone and in combination for 30 days. Myocardial As content, serum cardiac marker enzyme activities including creatine kinase‐isoenzyme, lactate dehydrogenase, and aspartate aminotransferase were increased in As‐exposed rats. An accumulation of myocardial oxidants such as reactive oxygen species, lipid peroxidation, nitric oxide, protein carbonyl content, and histological aberrations was observed. A significant decrease of myocardial antioxidants comprises superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, reduced glutathione, and ascorbic acid and declined expression of desmin and vimentin was noted. Impaired energy signaling molecules AMPKα (Thr172), AMPKβ1/2 (Ser108), ACC (Ser79), and intracellular myocardial ATP depletion were observed in As‐intoxicated animals. FA attenuates As‐induced cardiac dysfunction by restoring the expression of intermediate filaments and AMPK proteins. Based on the above findings, FA treatment could be used as a novel therapeutic against As‐induced cardiac dysfunction.

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Chromium (Cr) is a toxic heavy metal discharged into the environment through various anthropogenic sources, which affects soil properties and fertility. Hence, an effective soil restoration strategy is the need of the hour. In this study, a potent Cr(VI)-reducing strain M2 was isolated from the rhizosphere of Zea mays L. grown in leather industrial effluent contaminated sites and identified as Bacillus flexus through 16S rDNA sequencing. Strain M2 exhibited strong tolerance to multi-stresses such as temperature (up to 45 °C), pH (up to 9.0), Sodium chloride (NaCl) (up to 7%) and PEG 6000 (up to 50%) and showed strong Cr(VI) reduction with the presence of multi-stresses. The interaction of Cr(VI) with strain M2 was elucidated through various instrumentation analyses. Fourier Transform Infra-red (FTIR) Spectroscopy analysis confirmed that Cr(VI) exposures induce significant changes in the cell-surface functional groups. Raman spectrum and Transmission Electron Microscopy–Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (TEM-EDX) analysis confirmed the bio-reduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) and their intracellular localization as Cr(III). Further, strain M2 produced a significant quantity of Indole acetic acid (IAA), ammonia, and exopolysaccharide (EPS) and showed positive results for various plant-growth-promoting activities with the presence of Cr(VI). In greenhouse experiments, the strain M2 inoculation progressively increased the plant growth parameters and stabilized the antioxidant system of Vigna radiata under Cr stress. However, Cr(VI) exposure decreased the growth parameters and increased the level of proline content, Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) accumulation, and antioxidant enzymes expression in V. radiata. Interestingly, strain M2 inoculation significantly reduced the accumulation of Cr in root and shoot of V. radiata when compared to the uninoculated Cr(VI) treatment. Hence, this study confirms that rhizobacterial inoculation markedly reduced the negative impact of Cr toxicity and improved V. radiata growth even in harsh environments by stabilizing the mobility of Cr in the rhizosphere.

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Evaluation of local indigenous medicinal rice (Oryza sativa Linn.) varieties using molecular and metabolic profiling plays dynamic role for unravelling the genetic variability and restorative bio actives. In the present study, 18 screened random decamer (RAPD) markers were used to analyze genetic diversity and relationship among 25 indigenous landraces and 1 commercial rice varieties (White ponni), and GC-MS profiling of phylogenetic clusters positioned 4 random indigenous rice varieties and 1 White ponni rice were documented for exploring bioactive metabolites. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis of twenty-six rice varieties of Tamil Nadu divulges significant genetic differentiation. The primers produced total of 92 bands with size ranges from 100-8500bp out of 74 were polymorphic bands indicating 80% polymorphism. The mean values of RAPD for polymorphism information content (PIC) of 0.268, effective multiple ratio (EMR) of 23.38, marker index (MI) of 7.39 and the resolving power (Rp) of 4.34. The primer OPA-02, OPD-08, OPF-13 produced maximum number of bands (8), OPAA-07 produced minimum number of band (2). The UPGMA dendrogram were constructed based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficients. The dendrogram resolved the indigenous rice varieties into 3 main clusters and 3 monoclades ranged from 0.467 to 0.860, commercial rice variety shows marginal ungrouped position of 1. In the 3-main clustering, based GC-MS profilling (methanol and acetone rice bran extracts) of Karuppu Kavuni, Karuthakar, Kottara samba, Kaivara samba and ungrouped position of White ponni revealed 88 distinctive bioactive metabolites. And profiling results substantiate that the traditional rice varieties hold promising therapeutic metabolites for sedentary lifestyle disorders.