In recent years, the edible biomedicinal products called nutraceuticals have been becoming more popular among the pharmaceutical industries and the consumers. In the process of developing nutraceuticals, in silico approaches play an important role in structural elucidation, receptor-ligand interactions, drug designing etc., that critically help the laboratory experiments to avoid biological and financial risk. In this thesis, three nutraceuticals possessing antimicrobial and anticancer activities have been studied. Firstly, a tertiary structure was elucidated for a coagulant protein (MO2.1) of Moringa oleifera based on homology modeling and also studied its oligomerization that is believed to interfere with its medicinal properties. Secondly, the antimicrobial efficiency of a limonoid from neem tree called ‘azadirachtin’ was studied with a bacterial (Proteus mirabilis) detoxification agent, glutathione S-transferase, to propose it as a potent drug candidate for urinary tract infections. Thirdly, sequence specific binding activity was analyzed for a plant alkaloid called ‘palmatine’ for the purpose of developing intercalators in cancer therapy. Cumulatively, we have used in silico methods to propose the structure of an antimicrobial peptide and also to understand the interactions between protein and nucleic acids with these nutraceuticals. / <p>QC 20130531</p>

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No description available.

No description available.

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) analyzes wastewater for the presence of biological and chemical substances to make public health conclusions. COVID-19 disease is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that infected individuals shed also in their feces, making WBE an alternative way to track SARS-CoV-2 in populations. There are many limitations to the detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater, such as sample quality, storage conditions or viral concentration. This thesis aims to determine the extent of these limitations and the factors that contribute to them. Other viruses can help the measurements for example Bovine coronavirus (BCoV) can be spiked as a process surrogate, while Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV), a fecal biomarker is used to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This study involved two distinct wastewater samples. For method comparison both samples were processed with two methods: virus concentration by electronegative (EN) filtration or direct RNA extraction method. From the RNA extracts RT-qPCR assays were performed to identify and quantify SARS-CoV-2, BCoV, and PMMoV. Based on the obtained cycle threshold (Ct) values, viral gene copy numbers and virus concentration of the original wastewater samples were calculated. Statistical tests were conducted to assess suggested hypothesizes and variations within the data. Results revealed differences in viral contents due to different sample qualities and as a result of freezing and thawing. Furthermore, different sample processing methods led to differences in quantification. In conclusion, improving analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater using methodologies with better detection efficiency leads to more reliable results.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that is caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Timely detection of sepsis and antibiotic treatment is important for the patient’s recovery from sepsis. Usually, when sepsis is detected, immediate antibiotic treatment is started with broad-spectrum antibiotics as it takes time to determine the correct antibiotic susceptibility. To overcome this problem, next-generation sequencing is seen as one possible development in clinical diagnostics in the future. Automated bioinformatics pipelines could be used initially for surveillance purposes but eventually for rapid clinical diagnosis. Therefore, the results of 1928 Diagnostics, an automated pipeline for whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data analysis, were compared with the results of an in-house developed pipeline for manual data processing by analyzing sepsis-associated Escherichia coli (SEPEC) WGS data. The pipelines were compared by assessing their predicted antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes, virulence genes and epidemiological relatedness. In addition, the predicted resistance genes were compared to phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) data from the clinical microbiology laboratory. All the results obtained from the 1928 Diagnostics and in-house pipeline were similar but differed in the number of virulence/predicted AMR genes, AMR gene variants, detection of species and epidemiologically related E. coli samples. Moreover, the predicted AMR genes from both pipelines did not show a good overall relation to the phenotypic AST result. More studies are needed to make predictions of genes from the WGS analysis more reliable so that WGS analysis can be used as a diagnostics tool in clinical laboratories in the future.

DNA profiling with short tandem repeat data generated with massively parallel sequencing is associated with several challenges. FDSTools is an open-source software which applies correction models based on a reference database to correct DNA profiles. The correction models aim to provide an accurate representation of the true DNA profile and associated artefacts. Low analytical thresholds in FDSTools are suggested to improve detection of minor profiles in complex mixtures. The objective was to optimise FDSTools analysis for ForenSeq data, and to establish a Swedish reference database. The FDSTools analysis was subsequently compared to default analysis with the commercial Universal Analysis Software, and the likelihood ratio was evaluated. The FDSTools Library file was adapted for ForenSeq data. FASTQ files from single- and mixed-source samples were analysed with the software. The concordance between the software was assessed, and analytical thresholds in FDSTools were optimised. Likelihood ratios were calculated for sequencing- and capillary electrophoresis data to investigate the benefit of sequence level information. A reference database and correction models could not be generated, meaning that uncorrected data was used. The two software showed a 98.5% concordance. Disconcordance was caused by allele drop-out in heterozygous loci which implicated that certain markers may require individual interpretation. Lowering the analytical thresholds in FDSTools appeared to improve mixture deconvolution, but the lack of correction models obscured interpretation. Hence, without correction models optimial analytical thresholds could not be defined. Likelihood ratio based on sequencing data was not consistently higher compared to capillary electrophoresis, suggesting that sequence information is not always advantageous.

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No description available.

Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction that is caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Sepsis is a substantial health care and economic burden worldwide and is one of the most common reasons for admission to the hospital and intensive care unit. Early diagnosis and targeted treatment of sepsis are the bases to reduce the mortality and morbidity. Conventional blood culturing is the gold standard method for sepsis diagnostics. However, blood culturing is a time consuming method, requiring at least 48 to 72 hours to get the first results with very low sensitivity and specificity. The aim of this study was to determine and assess the direct sepsis-related costs for PCR-based diagnostic strategies (SeptiFast and POC/LAB). A mathematical model was constructed to compare PCR-based diagnostic strategies with the conventional blood culturing. Three case scenarios were investigated based on data from the United Kingdom, Spain and the Czech Republic. It was found that, POC/LAB was the most cost effective strategy in all countries if it could reduce the hospitalization length of stay with at least 3 days in the normal hospital ward and 1 day in the intensive care unit. Reducing the hospitalization length of stay had the greatest impact on the economic outcomes. While, reducing the costs of the diagnostic strategies did not show a remarkable effect on the economic results. In conclusion, the findings suggest that PCR-rapid diagnostic methods could be cost-effective for the diagnosis of patients with sepsis if they could reduce the hospitalization length of stay.