Annual Research & Review in Biology

Through sustainable agriculture it is possible to explore the coffee culture in consortium with native forests in more rugged reliefs, as coffee is a permanent crop in addition to the climatic conditions offered by the swamps that favor its development. Given the above, the present work proposes, based on the acidity results, to quantify  the need for correctives in the soil to obtain a better nutritional use offered by agroforestry cultivation of organic coffee in the shade with favorable results to increase productivity and, consequently, the farmer's profit. The research was carried out at the Várzea da Onça farm, in the Yaguara Ecological Complex, located in the municipality of Taquaritinga do Norte, Borborema plateau, in the Agreste Pernambuco mesoregion. Altitude, it is necessary to adopt appropriate management techniques that guarantee production, soil conservation and biodiversity, proposing soil correction to guarantee the ideal nutritional conditions for coffee growth. For this purpose, soil samples were collected in the Top (T), Hillside (E) and Pedimento (P) ranges at depths of 0-20, 20-40 and 40-60 cm when planting shaded coffee and soil samples from Native Forest (MN) preserved and legally protected from the Brejo de Taquaritinga. Active, exchangeable and potential acidity were analyzed, as well as the sum of bases, the potential and effective cation exchange capacity, base saturation and aluminum saturation. The results obtained were subjected to analysis of variance and the means were tested at 5% by the Tukey test. A potential of the system was found with low to very low natural fertility, with a strongly acidic reaction. Thus, adequate soil management and correction techniques are necessary for the crop to absorb all the nutrients made available by the organic matter present on the surface, concluding that all slopes require liming, the slope of Hillside and Mata Nativa they also need plastering for the culture to develop properly.

The availability of mungbean (Vigna radiata) genetic resources is important in breeding programs for development of new improved varieties. The objective of this study was to  describe the characters of 300 accessions of ILETRI’s mungbean genetic resources  collections. The study was conducted in Jambegede Experimental Station, East Java, Indonesia during dry season 2018. The results showed that the descriptive characters of 300 mungbean germplasm accessions had a fairly wide range, namely  50%-flowering date ranged from 30-50 days after planting with an average of 41.92 days, Pod maturity  ranged from 50 - 88 days after planting with an average of 74.08 days, 100-seed weight ranged from 2.43 to 7.96 g with an average of 4.52 g, and Seed weight per plot ranged from 10 - 525 g with an average of 254.53 g. There were three accessions with seed size more than 7.5 g/100 seeds, namely MLGV 0713, MLGV 0960, and MLGV 1027. These accessions could be used as a source of genes for developing high yielding and large seed size of  new improved mungbean varieties. Furthermore, the high diversity data in mungbean collection can provide information to used by  breeders.

Background: despite limited long-term survival, kidney transplantation is the best form of renal replacement therapy for terminal disease patients. Components of extracellular purinergic signaling plays a fundamental role on inflammation and immune response related to organ transplantation. They could be alternative targets to avoid graft rejection.

Materials and Methods: The hydrolysis of ATP, ADP and AMP nucleotides was analyzed in both lymphocytes and platelets, as well as the quantification of ATP and ADA activity. A sample of 30 patients who underwent kidney transplants was obtained, of which 15 had a transplant time of less than one year (acute response) and 15 had a transplant time between one and three years (chronic response).

Results: In the group with transplantation time between one and three years, it was possible to identify a significant decrease in the amount of ATP, increase in ATP hydrolysis in platelets, decrease in AMP hydrolysis and increase in ADA activity, also in platelets. In the lymphocyte sample, there was a significant reduction in ADA activity as well as a decrease in the amount of ATP.

Conclusions: From the data obtained in the study, it can be inferred that adenosine can reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines, providing greater graft survival and reducing the intensity of graft-versus-host disease. ATP signaling exerts inflammatory effects and modulates the purinergic signaling cascade, offering new avenues for drug therapies to combat chronic graft rejection.

Aims: The current study was developed to investigate the influence of grape seeds (GS) and mandarin peels (MP) extracts as powerful antioxidants on the cardiotoxicity induced by cyclophosphamide (CP) in rats.

Place of Study: Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition, Faculty of Women for Arts, Science and Education, Ain Shams University.

Methodology: Sixty adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into 6 groups. Group (1): Rats were received distilled water daily orally for 6 weeks and injected interperitoneally (i.p) with saline (0.9 %) (2.5 ml / kg BW) as single dose at the end of the sixth week of experiment. Group (2): Rats were received distilled water orally and injected with single dose of cyclophosphamide which dissolved in saline (200 mg/kg BW. i.p.) at the end of the sixth week of experiment. Groups (3 and 4):  Rats were received grape seeds extracts low and high doses (150 and 300 mg /kg BW), respectively daily orally for 6 weeks then injected with cyclophosphamide as group 2. Groups (5 and 6): Rats were received mandarin peels extracts low and high doses (150 and 300 mg /kg BW), respectively daily orally for 6 weeks then injected with cyclophosphamide as group 2.

Results: Our results documented that CP caused a significant increase in serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALK-P), creatine kinase (CK-MB), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), creatine kinase (CK) enzymes activity and serum malondialdehyde (MDA) level. While total antioxidant capacity level (TAC) showed a significant decrease. On the other hand cardiac catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activities and cardiac β cell lymphoma (Bcl-2) level showed a significant decrease in CP group while cardiac p53, caspase-3 and DNA fragmentation levels showed a significant increase in CP intoxicated group. Also, some histopathological changes were observed in liver and heart tissues in CP group. Oral administration of GS and MP caused an ameliorative effect in oxidative and apoptotic biomarkers, liver and heart function enzymes activity with an improvement of histopathological changes in liver and heart tissues.

Conclusion: Our data proved that the protective effect of grape seeds and mandarin peels in cyclophosphamide intoxicated group may be due to their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti- apoptotic properties.

Polygalacturonases are extensively used in food industries for pectic substances degradation. In this paper, we investigate on thermal stability parameters of two Polygalacturonases previously isolated from digestive juice of the snail Limicolaria flammea for several industrial applications such as fruit juice clarification. Thermal inactivation was carried out in the temperature range of 55°C to 80°C from 15 to 120 min. All results were statistically analysed. The results shown that thermal inactivation of studied acid phosphatases follows first order kinetics. At their optimum temperatures, these enzymes showed high half-lives ranging from 462.06 to 630.10 min and D values from 1535.00 to 2093.64 min suggesting that these two enzymes had a large thermal stability. The high values of ΔG^# (93.96 to 94.97 kJ/mol) reveal a better resistance to denaturation. The relatively high activation energies (from 120.35 to 129.13 kJ/mol) and average enthalpy values (from 117.67 to 126.44 kJ.mol−1) could corroborate the good stability of these biocatalyst. All these results suggest that Polygalacturonases from digestive juice of the snail Limicolaria flammea may be profitably exploited in future food industrial applications.

The experiment was conducted with the objective of providing more information on the physiology and rumen microbial ecology of goats fed municipal organic solid waste treated with Diastic microbes of snails (Achatina achatina). The study was on the treated and untreated municipal organic solid waste as components of experimental diet. Balanced rations containing diets; A = 45% untreated municipal organic waste (UMOW), B = 45% treated municipal organic waste (TMOW), and C = 70% treated municipal organic waste (TMOW), with wheat offal, palm kernel cake, and molasses used to balance the diets. Where grass/legume ratio of 3 parts of Panicum maximum and 1 part of Centrocema were fed across treatments at the same proportion. The three rations were fed to 18 unsex Red Sokoto goats aged between 6 to 7 months, with an average weight of 8.01±2.50kg. They were housed in pens, on a floor space of 0.5 to 0.75m² in a completely randomized designed experiment replicated six times and fed for a period of 52 days. The results were separated according to the parameters of rumen physiology (pH, total volatile fatty acids, acetic, propionic, butyric acids and ethanol, and rumen ecology (bacteria, protozoa, and fungi, which are mainly anaerobic microbes). The investigations revealed that microbial (bacteria, protozoa and fungi) load counts were significantly (p<0.05) influenced by dietary treatments. While the total volatile fatty acids (TVFA), acetic, butyric and propionic increased (p<0.05) except for the TVFA and the propionic acid that showed numerical (p>0.05) increased levels of (TMOW). The pH levels improved (p>0.05) between 6.7 to 6.8 where the rumen electrolytes (Ca, Na and K) increased (p<0.01) with increased levels of TMOW. Rumen moisture, dry matter and fat content were (p<0.01) influenced by TMOW diets while ash content was (p<0.01) influenced by the TMOW. Crude protein, ether extract, crude fibre and carbohydrate were not affected (p<0.01; p<0.05) affected. It is good to note that, the microbial community of snail used in the pre-feeding fermentation of municipal organic waste had influence in the physiology and rumen microbial ecology at interface with the goat, enhanced improved the organic matter degradation and feed quality, of the highly fibrous municipal organic solid waste.

As shown, in particular, by the late S.J. Gould, the involvement of a regulation process, aiming at limiting the range of intraspecific variations in adult shell size, in those land snail species with determinate growth, can be indirectly, but conveniently, diagnosed by highlighting a negative covariance between the whorls growth-rate and the whorls number reached at adulthood. However, up to now, such kind of regulation had only been demonstrated in very few cases among land snails and shelled Gastropods in general. Accordingly, quite more extensive checking is required, across both the taxonomic spectrum and the geometrical range of shell profiles. The present report is a very preliminary contribution addressing these issues, which have been neglected for too long. Considering a still limited number of eight species, yet largely encompassing both taxonomic range and shell profiles, it is shown that strong negative covariances between whorls growth-rate and whorls number are systematically highlighted, thereby supporting the involvement of an efficient regulation process of adult shell size and shape in each eight species. Moreover, the degree of regulation of the adult shell size has been quantified and this regulation proves being remarkably effective as a whole, while yet remaining highly species-specific, with very significant disparities among species – and this, somewhat surprisingly, being quite irrespective of the type of geometrical profiles of shells, among the studied species.

In order to evaluate the improvement of rubber productivity of rubber trees by late upward tapping. A study was conducted at SCASO (Société Civile Agricole du Sud-Ouest) on the PB 260 clone of the active metabolic class. The experimental set-up is a Fisher block design with eight treatments and three replications. The treatments compared were bled in reverse in the eleventh year of harvest, in quarter spiral every 3, 4, 5 and 6 days, with stimulation frequencies of 6, 8, 10, 12 and 13 times a year. The parameters measured were rubber production, isodiametric growth, sensitivity to dry notching of trees and physiological profile. The results show that the different latex harvesting technologies improve the rubber productivity of PB 260 (5469 kg.ha^-1.yr^-1) with a low dry-nut rate (1.2%) and satisfactory radial vegetative growth (3.9cm.yr^-1). The physiological profile of the trees is balanced, but the treatments significantly influenced the different parameters except sucrose. Trees bled in S/4U d3 gave better results due to their high yield with an acceptable dry notch rate. Late reverse tapping is therefore a good latex harvesting technology for improving rubber productivity after down tapping.

This study investigates the effect of nitrogen and moisture superabsorbent on yield, yield components, seed nitrogen and biological traits in the field of pumpkin during two cropping years (2018-2019) in Kermanshah, Iran. The experiment was carried out as a split-plot based on Randomized Complete Block Design (RBCD) with three replications. The main plot factor was the application of moisture superabsorbent at various levels of 0 (control), 40, 80, 120 kg ha-1, respectively, and nitrogen fertilization at the levels of 0, 50, 100 and 150 kg ha-1 were considered as sub-factor. Results show that treatments significantly affected fruit fresh weight, fruit dry weight, leaf dry weight, stem dry weight, fruit number per plant, grain weight, grain number per fruit, grain nitrogen percentage, except for fruit number per plant. In the most traits, there was an increasing trend when nitrogen levels increased, although N₂ levels of 100 and 150 kg ha^-1 were not significantly different. In addition, increasing the moisture superabsorbent enhanced the mentioned traits. As a result, the combination of nitrogen 100 and superabsorbent 120 is the best and most economical combination.

Aims: Aim: Protein in breast milk has diverse functions which gives short and long term benefits. This means human milk must adequately supply the nutritional needs of infants especially during the period of exclusive breast feeding as mandated for lactating mothers. The study assessed quantity of proteins in lactating stages of mother’s breast milk and the factors that influence its availability in Yobe State, Nigeria.

Study Design: Quantitative experimental and descriptive survey methods were adopted for the study. Quantitative experimental design was used for the analysis of breast milk samples collected while descriptive survey method was used to derive primary and secondary data to determine factors influencing protein in breast milk.

Place and Duration of Study: The collection of the samples was done in three stages of lactation from October to December (2019) in Yobe State, Nigeria.

Methodology: Primiparous women residing in Nguru (n= 49/town) were recruited base on agreement with the hospitals prior to their delivery. Breast milk samples were collected at three stages of lactation; colostrums (1-2 days), transition (12 day) and mature (30 day) for protein analysis. Descriptive survey through structured questionnaire was adopted to derive primary data which was used to determine nutrition during pregnancy and factors influencing breast milk composition.

Results: The mean proteins are 3.88%, 1.79% and 1.23% for colostrum, transition and mature   milk respectively. It showed that breast milk is a dynamic fluid with changes in its protein content over the course of lactation and varies within and between nutrition and between mothers. Those with low, normal and high BMI accounted for 6.1%, 81.6% and 12.2% respectively. Based on    WHO standard, 82% of the women has normal BMI during pregnancy which translate good  nutrition.

Conclusion: The nutrition of the pregnant women influenced breast milk proteins. Age, ethnicity, religion and parity have no significant effect on protein quantity in breast milk. Increased education stratification and income levels contribute positively to proteins in lactation stages.

Orchid roots have vital functions for water absorption, nutrient uptake, a place of symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi, adaptation, and survival. The aim of the present study was to investigate root traits in terms of root morphological, anatomical, and mycorrhizal features of a terrestrial orchid, Peristylus goodyeroides in relation to an ecological significance of root traits in survival of seedlings, juveniles, and adults of the orchid. Results showed that some morphological characters (root length and depth), anatomical features (cortical cell size, xylem number and diameter), and mycorrhizal features (peloton size and number) were significantly different between seedlings, juveniles, and adults. In relation to root functional traits, lowest root length, depth, xylem number and diameter, peloton size and number in seedlings can be associated with low capacity in water and nutrient acquisition that might explain low survival of seedlings relative to juveniles and adults. Present study has implication for orchid conservation suggesting high attention in low survival rate of seedlings related to specificity in some of their morphological, anatomical, and mycorrhizal features which can be associated with low capacity in water and nutrient acquisition. It is vital to ensure water availability for seedlings, particularly, during dry seasons to decrease high mortality of seedlings as such high mortality can have adverse impacts on long-term survival of the orchid population.

Globally, fish production in the wild is decreasing, and different aquaculture systems are presently being used for broodstock development in the captivity. Seasonally, broodstock raised in captivity exhibit different form of reproductive dysfunction at the level of the brain-pituitary-gonad (BPG) axis. Primarily, vitellogenic completion and final oocyte maturation are inhibited in females, and males fail to spermiate spontaneously in the captivity. Reproductive dysfunctions are also observed during sexual differentiation, pubertal onset and sex conversion periods in teleosts. To overcome these problems, different hormonal preparations, primarily gonadotropin-releasing hormones (GnRH) are used. In recent years, kisspeptins have been shown to be potent in inducing gonadal growth and maturation in teleost fish. Understanding the form of reproductive dysfunction is important in formulating suitable hormonal preparations for inducing gametogenesis. The paper reviews the problem of reproductive dysfunction and their possible reason for formulating different hormonal preparations.