Impact of ER Stress and ER-Mitochondrial Crosstalk in Huntington’s Disease

Accumulation of misfolded proteins is a common phenomenon of several neurodegenerative diseases. The misfolding of proteins due to abnormal polyglutamine (PolyQ) expansions are linked to the development of PolyQ diseases including Huntington’s disease (HD). Though the genetic basis of PolyQ repeats in HD remains prominent, the primary molecular basis mediated by PolyQ toxicity remains elusive. Accumulation of misfolded proteins in the ER or disruption of ER homeostasis causes ER stress and activates an evolutionarily conserved pathway called Unfolded protein response (UPR). Protein homeostasis disruption at organelle level involving UPR or ER stress response pathways are found to be linked to HD. Due to dynamic intricate connections between ER and mitochondria, proteins at ER-mitochondria contact sites (mitochondria associated ER membranes or MAMs) play a significant role in HD development. The current review aims at highlighting the most updated information about different UPR pathways and their involvement in HD disease progression. Moreover, the role of MAMs in HD progression has also been discussed. In the end, the review has focused on the therapeutic interventions responsible for ameliorating diseased states via modulating either ER stress response proteins or modulating the expression of ER-mitochondrial contact proteins.     

Ionomic Approaches for Discovery of Novel Stress-Resilient Genes in Plants

Plants, being sessile, face an array of biotic and abiotic stresses in their lifespan that endanger their survival. Hence, optimized uptake of mineral nutrients creates potential new routes for enhancing plant health and stress resilience. Recently, minerals (both essential and non-essential) have been identified as key players in plant stress biology, owing to their multifaceted functions. However, a realistic understanding of the relationship between different ions and stresses is lacking. In this context, ionomics will provide new platforms for not only understanding the function of the plant ionome during stresses but also identifying the genes and regulatory pathways related to mineral accumulation, transportation, and involvement in different molecular mechanisms under normal or stress conditions. This article provides a general overview of ionomics and the integration of high-throughput ionomic approaches with other “omics” tools. Integrated omics analysis is highly suitable for identification of the genes for various traits that confer biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. Moreover, ionomics advances being used to identify loci using qualitative trait loci and genome-wide association analysis of element uptake and transport within plant tissues, as well as genetic variation within species, are discussed. Furthermore, recent developments in ionomics for the discovery of stress-tolerant genes in plants have also been addressed; these can be used to produce more robust crops with a high nutritional value for sustainable agriculture.     

Design and development of SnO decorated BaTiO3 heterostructure device platform for ethanol vapor detection

Herein, we reported the SnO decorated BaTiO₃ heterostructure as well as pristine BaTiO₃ based ethanol gas sensing properties examined. Barium titanate (BaTiO₃) and tin oxide (SnO) materials have been successfully synthesized by the hydrothermal alkaline solution technique. Structural investigations carried out by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis suggested the cubic phase of BaTiO₃ and the tetragonal SnO phase of the materials. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) suggested irregular nanospheres of BaTiO₃ and micro sheets of SnO. The macroporous nature of BaTiO₃ and mesoporous nature of SnO were confirmed through Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis.   The fabricated device of BaTiO₃/SnO heterostructure shows sensor response of 10% with the fast response/recovery time of 1.9/1.6 s at the operating temperature of 150 °C for 500 ppm of ethanol vapor. The highest performance for the BaTiO₃/SnO heterostructure device was found to be sensor performance of 343% for 500 ppm of ethanol vapor with fast response time of 2.4 s at the operating temperature of 250 °C and it shows excellent sensor response at higher temperature. 

     

Communication constraints multi-agent territory exploration task

A common assumption made in multi-robot research is the connectedness of the underlying network. Although this seems a valid assumption for static networks, it is not realistic for mobile robotic networks, where communication between robots usually is distance dependent. Motivated by this fact, we explicitly consider the communication limitations. This paper extends the LFIP based exploration framework previously developed by Pal et al. (Cogn. Comput. doi:10.1007/s12559-012-9142-7, 2012), to address the Multi-Agent Territory Exploration (MATE-n _k ) task under severe communication constraints. In MATE-n _k task agents have to explore their environment to find and visit n checkpoints, which only count as “visited” when k agents are present at the same time. In its simplest form, the architecture consists of two layers: an “Exploration layer” consisting of a selection of future locations for the team for further exploring the environment, and “Exploration and CheckpointVisit layer”, consisting of visiting the detected checkpoints while continuing the exploration task. The connectivity maintenance objective is achieved via two ways: (1) The first layer employs a leader-follower concept, where a communication zone is constructed by the leader using a distance transforms method, and (2) In the second layer we make use of a graph theory for characterizing the communication, which employs the adjacency and Laplacian matrices of the graph and their spectral properties. The proposed approach has been implemented and evaluated in several simulated environments and with varying team sizes and communication ranges. Throughout the paper, our conclusions are corroborated by the results from extensive simulations.     

Brain tumor segmentation using DE embedded OTSU method and neural network

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing - In the past few decades, medical imaging and soft computing have shown a symbolic growth in brain tumor segmentation. Research in medical imaging is...