Humans have relied on nature throughout their ages to cater for their basic needs including medicines to cure a wide spectrum of diseases. Plants have formed the basis for sophisticated systems of traditional medicines. For therapeutic agents many of the presently known lead compounds are natural products or their derivatives. Ethnomedicinal studies play a vital role to discover new drugs from indigenous medicinal plants. Green pharmaceuticals are getting popularity and extraordinary importance because vast opportunities for new drug discoveries are provided by the unmatched availability of chemical diversity and natural products either as pure compounds or as homogenous plant extracts. Therefore, in recent years the demand for herbal medicines and several natural products from a variety of plant species is consistently increasing. In spite of being an agricultural country and having different ecological regions, the medicinal plants of Pakistan have not been explored for their secondary metabolites which are responsible for treating different diseases. Although, huge importance of different extracts of medicinal plants from Pakistan have been reported for their different activities such as antimicrobial, anti-cancerouse, antiviral and antioxidant but complete biochemical profiling of these medicinal plants is lacking. LC-MS and GC-MS techniques have been applied in the field of drug discovery from medicinal plants but in Pakistan its success rate is very low in the subject of biochemical profiling. Therefore, such techniques should be used in Pakistan to explore active constituents from medicinal plants which could be used as medicines in future.
The synthesis of nanomaterials with specific properties and functions as biomimetic nanoenzymes has attracted extensive attention in the past decades due to their great potential to substitute natural enzymes. Herein, a facile and simple method for the preparation of platinum nanoparticle (PtNP)-decorated two-dimensional metal-organic framework (MOF) nanocomposites was developed. A ligand with heme-like structure, Fe(III) tetra(4-carboxyphenyl)porphine chloride (TCPP(Fe)), was applied to synthesize MOF nanosheets (denoted as Cu-TCPP(Fe) nanosheets) in high yield. Ultrathin Cu-TCPP(Fe) nanosheets with thickness less than 10 nm were used as a novel template for the growth of ultrasmall and uniform PtNPs. Significantly, the obtained hybrid nanomaterials (PtNPs/Cu-TCPP(Fe) hybrid nanosheets) exhibit enhanced peroxidase-like activity compared to PtNPs, Cu-TCPP(Fe) nanosheets, and the physical mixture of both due to the synergistic effect. On account of the excellent peroxidase-like activity of PtNPs/Cu-TCPP(Fe) hybrid nanosheets, we established a colorimetric method for sensitive and rapid detection of hydrogen peroxide. Furthermore, by combining with glucose oxidase, a cascade colorimetric method was established to further detect glucose with excellent sensitivity and selectivity.
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are ubiquitously expressed, covalently closed rings, produced by pre-mRNA splicing in a reversed order during post-transcriptional processing. Circularity endows 3′-5′-linked circRNAs with stability and resistance to exonucleolytic degradation which raises the question whether circRNAs may be relevant as potential therapeutic targets or agents. High stability in biological systems is the most remarkable property and a major criterion for why circRNAs could be exploited for a range of RNA-centred medical applications. Even though various biological roles and regulatory functions of circRNAs have been reported, their in-depth study is challenging because of their circular structure and sequence-overlap with linear mRNA counterparts. Moreover, little is known about their role in viral infections and in antiviral immune responses. We believe that an in-depth and detailed understanding of circRNA mediated viral protein regulations will increase our knowledge of the biology of these novel molecules. In this review, we aimed to provide a comprehensive basis and overview on the biogenesis, significance and regulatory roles of circRNAs in the context of antiviral immune responses and viral infections including hepatitis C virus infection, hepatitis B virus infection, hepatitis delta virus infection, influenza A virus infection, Epstein-Barr virus infection, kaposi's sarcoma herpesvirus infection, human cytomegalovirus infection, herpes simplex virus infection, human immunodeficiency virus infection, porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus infection, ORF virus infection, avian leukosis virus infection, simian vacuolating virus 40 infection, transmissible gastroenteritis coronavirus infection, and bovine viral diarrhoea virus infection. We have also discussed the critical regulatory role of circRNAs in provoking antiviral immunity, providing evidence for implications as therapeutic agents and as diagnostic markers.
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