No abstract

With the advent of science and technology, agro-industrial wastes are converted into various value-added products to meet the demands of increasing population. In recent years, natural polymers have evoked tremendous interest due to easy conversion into value-added products. Apart from various natural polymers, pectin occupied a prominent place due to diverse pharmaceutical and therapeutic applications. Excess utilisation of pectin, the gap between production and demand is widening. To fulfil this gap various techniques are adopted for obtaining high yield pectin from various agro-industrial wastes. This chapter will be focusing on extraction and purification of pectin from various agro-industrial wastes, considered as main environmental pollutants.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a member of the family Coronaviridae, and the world is currently witnessing a global pandemic outbreak of this viral disease called COVID-19. With no specific treatment regime, this disease is now a serious threat to humanity and claiming several lives daily. In this work, we selected 24 phytochemicals for an in silico docking study as candidate drugs, targeting four essential proteins of SARS-CoV-2 namely Spike glycoprotein (PDB id 5WRG), Nsp9 RNA binding protein (PDB id 6W4B), Main Protease (PDB id 6Y84), and RNA dependent RNA Polymerase (PDB id 6M71). After statistical validation, the results indicated that a total of 11 phytochemicals divided into two clusters might be used as potential drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13337-021-00654-x.