Biofortification is an upcoming, promising, cost-effective, and sustainable technique of delivering micronutrients to a population that has limited access to diverse diets and other micronutrient interventions. Unfortunately, major food crops are poor sources of micronutrients required for normal human growth. The manuscript deals in all aspects of crop biofortification which includes—breeding, agronomy, and genetic modification. It tries to summarize all the biofortification research that has been conducted on different crops. Success stories of biofortification include lysine and tryptophan rich quality protein maize (World food prize 2000), Vitamin A rich orange sweet potato (World food prize 2016); generated by crop breeding, oleic acid, and stearidonic acid soybean enrichment; through genetic transformation and selenium, iodine, and zinc supplementation. The biofortified food crops, especially cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruits, are providing sufficient levels of micronutrients to targeted populations. Although a greater emphasis is being laid on transgenic research, the success rate and acceptability of breeding is much higher. Besides the challenges biofortified crops hold a bright future to address the malnutrition challenge.

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Wheat is a major cereal crop providing energy and nutrients to the billions of people around the world. Gluten is a structural protein in wheat, that is necessary for its dough making properties, but it is responsible for imparting certain intolerances among some individuals, which are part of this review. Most important among these intolerances is celiac disease, that is gluten triggered T-cell mediated autoimmune enteropathy and results in villous atrophy, inflammation and damage to intestinal lining in genetically liable individuals containing human leukocyte antigen DQ2/DQ8 molecules on antigen presenting cells. Celiac disease occurs due to presence of celiac disease eliciting epitopes in gluten, particularly highly immunogenic alpha-gliadins. Another gluten related disorder is non-celiac gluten-sensitivity in which innate immune-response occurs in patients along with gastrointestinal and non-gastrointestinal symptoms, that disappear upon removal of gluten from the diet. In wheat allergy, either IgE or non-IgE mediated immune response occurs in individuals after inhalation or ingestion of wheat. Following a lifelong gluten-free diet by celiac disease and non-celiac gluten-sensitivity patients is very challenging as none of wheat cultivar or related species stands safe for consumption. Hence, different molecular biology, genetic engineering, breeding, microbial, enzymatic, and chemical strategies have been worked upon to reduce the celiac disease epitopes and the gluten content in wheat. Currently, only 8.4% of total population is affected by wheat-related issues, while rest of population remains safe and should not remove wheat from the diet, based on false media coverage.

K؉ transport in living cells must be tightly controlled because it affects basic physiological parameters such as turgor, membrane potential, ionic strength, and pH. In yeast, the major high-affinity K ؉ transporter, Trk1, is inhibited by high intracellular K ؉ levels and positively regulated by two redundant "halotolerance" protein kinases, Sat4/Hal4 and Hal5. Here we show that these kinases are not required for Trk1 activity; rather, they stabilize the transporter at the plasma membrane under low K ؉ conditions, preventing its endocytosis and vacuolar degradation. High concentrations (0.2 M) of K ؉ , but not Na ؉ or sorbitol, transported by undefined low-affinity systems, maintain Trk1 at the plasma membrane in the hal4 hal5 mutant. Other nutrient transporters, such as Can1 (arginine permease), Fur4 (uracil permease), and Hxt1 (low-affinity glucose permease), are also destabilized in the hal4 hal5 mutant under low K ؉ conditions and, in the case of Can1, are stabilized by high K ؉ concentrations. Other plasma membrane proteins such as Pma1 (H ؉ -pumping ATPase) and Sur7 (an eisosomal protein) are not regulated by halotolerance kinases or by high K ؉ levels. This novel regulatory mechanism of nutrient transporters may participate in the quiescence/growth transition and could result from effects of intracellular K ؉ and halotolerance kinases on membrane trafficking and/or on the transporters themselves.

Colored wheat, rich in anthocyanins, has created interest among the breeders and baking industry. This study was aimed at understanding the nutritional and product making potential of our advanced, high yielding and regionally adapted colored wheat lines. Our results indicated that our advanced colored wheat lines exhibited higher anthocyanin content and antioxidant activity than donor wheat lines and it varied in the order of white

Background:The number of geropsychiatric patients is increasing but sufficient work has not been done in this area in many parts of India.Aim:This study explored the sociodemographic profile and clinical characteristics of patients aged 60 years and above, attending the psychiatric services of Institute of Medical Sciences and geropsychiatric patients of Mumukshu Bhavan (old age home) in Varanasi from September 1998 to September 1999.Methods:For the screening of psychiatric patients at Mumukshu Bhavan the Indian Psychiatric Survey Schedule was used. DSM-IV criteria were used for the diagnosis of patients and Chi-square test with Yate correction and Z-test were used for statistical analysis.Results:Depressive disorders were the most common psychiatric illnesses. Many patients had associated physical illnesses and among them hypertension was the most common. Family jointness was adequate for most of the patients. Objective social support was moderate for the majority of patients but perceived social support was poor. Patients of Mumukshu Bhavan perceived their social support to be either moderate or good.Conclusion:Depressive disorder was the most common psychiatric illness and among the physical illnesses hypertension was the commonest. People living in the old age home felt better than those who lived with their children's family.

The Escherichia coli rpoH gene product sigma 32 is essential for the increase in heat shock gene transcription found after exposure of the bacteria to a sudden temperature increase. It is not known how the concentration of active sigma 32 is modulated. We showed that rpoH transcript levels increased after heat shock and that the magnitude of the increase in the level of mRNA was correlated with the magnitude of the temperature shift. The increase in the level of rpoH mRNA was still found in rpoH mutants so the mechanism of induction differed from that of the set of previously identified heat shock genes. The increased concentration of rpoH mRNA should result in a higher level of sigma 32, which is likely to be important for increasing heat shock gene transcription.The bacterium Escherichia coli synthesizes a set of proteins at a higher rate after exposure to a sudden temperature increase (called heat shock). A similar response is thought to occur in all organisms (see references 9 and 24 for reviews). At least two of the E. coli heat shock proteins, DnaK and C62.5, ate related in amino acid sequence to eucaryotic heat shock proteins (2; J. Bardwell and E. Craig, personal communication), suggesting that a heat shock response may have evolved before the divergence of pro-and eucaryotes. Among the 17 or more E. coli heat shock proteins are the products of the dnaK, dnaJ, groES (mopB), groEL (mopA), lysU, grpE, lon, and rpoD genes (1, 3, 24, and references therein). These proteins are involved in transcription, translation, DNA synthesis, proteolysis, and bacteriophage morphogenesis. One effect of heat shock protein synthesis is to help protect bacteria from being killed by high temperatures (31). It has not been established which heat shock protein(s) contributes to protection from thermal killing, but other stresses, such as bacteriophage infection (10, 17) or treatment with ethanol (29) or DNA-damaging agents (18), induce the synthesis of many of the same proteins, so the proteins involved may protect cells from damage caused by several adverse conditions found in nature.Several of the steps in the response of E. coli to heat shock are now known. Less than 1 min after a temperature upshift, the transcription of heat shock genes begins to increase coordinately (30). The protein synthesis rates and transcript levels increase 5-to 50-fold (8, 26, 31). The synthesis rates peak around 5 to 8 min after the temperature shift and decline to new steady-state levels, which at 42°C are about two times the level at 30°C (15). Heat shock genes are defined by a requirement for the rpoH (previously known as htpR or hin) gene product for their transcription (22, 31). The rpoH gene product is called sigma 32 because it acts as an RNA polymerase sigma subunit, directing the enzyme to initiate transcription at heat shock gene promoters (14). The consensus sequence for heat shock promoters differs from that for promoters transcribed by RNA polymerase in combination with sigma 70, the normal sigma subunit (8 The mechanism by which tr...

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) have a significant role in protein folding and are considered as prominent candidates for development of heat-tolerant crops. Understanding of wheat HSPs has great importance since wheat is severely affected by heat stress, particularly during the grain filling stage. In the present study, efforts were made to identify HSPs in wheat and to understand their role during plant development and under different stress conditions. HSPs in wheat genome were first identified by using Position-Specific Scoring Matrix (PSSMs) of known HSP domains and then also confirmed by sequence homology with already known HSPs. Collectively, 753 TaHSPs including 169 TaSHSP, 273 TaHSP40, 95 TaHSP60, 114 TaHSP70, 18 TaHSP90 and 84 TaHSP100 were identified in the wheat genome. Compared with other grass species, number of HSPs in wheat was relatively high probably due to the higher ploidy level. Large number of tandem duplication was identified in TaHSPs, especially TaSHSPs. The TaHSP genes showed random distribution on chromosomes, however, there were more TaHSPs in B and D sub-genomes as compared to the A sub-genome. Extensive computational analysis was performed using the available genomic resources to understand gene structure, gene expression and phylogentic relationship of TaHSPs. Interestingly, apart from high expression under heat stress, high expression of TaSHSP was also observed during seed development. The study provided a list of candidate HSP genes for improving thermo tolerance during developmental stages and also for understanding the seed development process in bread wheat. The sessile nature of plants makes them vulnerable to various kinds of biotic and abiotic stresses. Plants have sophisticated mechanisms to recognize and respond to these stresses. High-temperature stress is common abiotic stress, which significantly reduces the crop yield worldwide. Simulation modeling has predicted that every 1 °C rise in temperature above 30 °C reduces the grain filling duration by 0.30-0.60% and grain yield by 1.0-1.6% 1. In response to high-temperature stress, plants synthesize many stress-responsive proteins including a family of proteins called heat shock proteins (HSPs). Enhanced production of HSPs has also been reported under other stress conditions like salinity, heavy metal, and drought 2,3. Some HSPs are also involved in the development of viral infections too, in both plants and animals 4,5. HSPs function as chaperones and assist in the refolding of denatured proteins, folding of nascent polypeptides and resolubilization of denatured protein aggregates 6,7. With increasing concerns about global warming and climate change, many laboratories across the world have used HSPs to create thermo-tolerant plants 8,9. There are reports describing the direct or indirect involvement of HSPs in different developmental stages of the plant 10. Various HSPs show tissue-specific and developmental stage specific