Nanotechnology is a multidisciplinary field and has achieved breakthroughs in bioengineering, molecular biology, diagnostics, and therapeutics. A recent advance in nanotechnology is the development of a functional nanosystem by incorporation, adsorption, or covalent coupling of polymers, carbohydrates, endogenous substances/ligands, peptides, proteins, nucleic acids, and polysaccharides to the surface of nanoparticles. Functionalization confers a wide array of interesting properties such as stealth characteristics, a bioadhesive property, and that it prevents aggregation of nanoparticles, imparts biostability and solubility, reduces toxicity, and provides site-specific delivery. This makes the nanosystem an intelligent tool for diagnostics, prognostics, and controlled and sustained delivery of protein, peptide, pDNA, and other therapeutic agents to specific targets (tissue, cell, and intracellular). Various types of functional nanosystems, such as carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, polymeric micelles, dendrimers, metallic nanoparticles, and liposomes, are being extensively explored. However, high tissue accumulation of nonbiodegradable nanoparticles has caused toxicity problems and rendered them as not-so-popular therapeutic and diagnostic systems. The toxicity and safety of nonbiodegradable nanoparticles are subject to future research. Polymeric nanoparticles have offered attractive alternative modules due to biocompatibility, nonimmunogenicity, nontoxicity, biodegradability, simple preparation methods, high physical stability, possibility of sustained drug release, and higher probability for surface functionalization. Depending on properties that have been modified, polymeric nanoparticles can be grouped in to four classes, namely, stealth, polysaccharide decorated biomimetic, bioadhesive, and ligand-anchored functional polymeric nanoparticles (f-PNPs). This review explores the ligand-anchored f-PNP as a carrier for active delivery of bioactives, envisaged to date. This review also details the ligands available for conjugation, their method of coupling to nanoparticles, and applications of f-PNPs in anticancer drug delivery, oral delivery, gene delivery, vaccine delivery, and intracellular delivery; site-specific delivery to liver, macrophages, lymphatics, and brain; and miscellaneous applications. This review also addresses formidable challenges encountered, and proposes some future strategies for development of a promising site-specific active delivery system.

Oral drug delivery is the most widely utilized route of administration among all the routes that have been explored for systemic delivery of drugs via pharmaceutical products of different dosage form and this oral route provides maximum active surface area among all drug delivery system for administration of various drugs. The attractiveness of these dosage forms is due to awareness of toxicity and ineffectiveness of drugs when administered by oral conventional method in the form of tablets and capsules. Usually, conventional dosage form produces wide range of fluctuation in drug concentration in the bloodstream and tissues with consequent undesirable toxicity and poor efficiency. The maintenance of concentration of drug in plasma within therapeutic index is very critical for effective treatment. These factors as well as factors such as repetitive dosing and unpredictable absorption lead to the concept of oral modified drug delivery systems like Sustained release, prolonged release, modified release, extended release. These formulations are used to identify drug delivery systems that are designed to achieve or extend therapeutic effect by continuously releasing medication over an extended period of time after administration of a single dose. This review describes the basic information regarding modified release dosage form like designed to release their medication in controlled manner, criteria for selecting modified release dosage form and factors influencing the dosage and release pattern.

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Symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) of transgenic grain legumes might be influenced either by the site of transgene integration into the host genome or due to constitutive expression of transgenes and antibiotic-resistant marker genes. The present investigation confirmed proper nodulation of five tested Bt-chickpea events (IPCa2, IPCa4, IPCT3, IPCT10, and IPCT13) by native Mesorhizobium under field environment. Quantitative variations for nodulation traits among Bt-chickpea were determined and IPCT3 was found superior for nodule number and nodule biomass. Diversity, as well as richness indices, confirmed the changes in bacterial community structure of root and root-nodules from Bt-chickpea events IPCa2 and IPCT10. Especially, Gram-positive bacteria belonging to Firmicutes and Actinobacteria were selectively eliminated from root colonization of IPCa2. Richness indices (CHAO1 and ACE) of the root-associated bacterial community of IPCa2 was 13-14 times lesser than that of parent cv DCP92-3. Root nodule associated bacterial community of IPCT10 was unique with high diversity and richness, similar to the roots of non-Bt and Bt-chickpea. It indicated that the root nodules of IPCT10 might have lost their peculiar characteristics and recorded poor colonization of Mesorhizobium with a low relative abundance of 0.27. The impact of Bt-transgene on bacterial community structure and nodulation traits should be analyzed across the years and locations to understand and stabilize symbiotic efficiency for ecosystem sustainability.

Lentil crop is highly sensitive to abrupt increase in temperature during mid to late reproductive stage leading to severe reduction of biomass and seed yield. Therefore, in the present investigation, RNAseq analysis was carried out between IG4258 (heat tolerant) and IG3973 (heat sensitive) lentil genotypes at reproductive stage under both normal and heat stress conditions in the field. It resulted in a total of 2,09,549 assembled transcripts and among these 1,61,809 transcripts had coding regions of which 94,437 transcripts were annotated. The differential gene expression analysis showed up-regulation of 678 transcripts

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The qualified method was successfully applied to simultaneously measure vanillin and vanillic acid in plasma and urine from a guinea pig pharmacokinetic study.

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