Researchers at Mysore Universityhave recently found that an enzyme extracted from the leaves of a medicinal plant, Tricosanthus tricuspidata, can counter the tissue damage caused by the bite of the venomous saw-scaled viper.

Around 50,000 people die every year from snakebites in India. Although there are 50–60 species of poisonous snakes in India, four of them – the ‘Big Four’ – have gained celebrity status for causing the highest number of snakebite-related fatalities: Indian cobra, common krait, saw-scaled viper, and Russell’s viper.

The viper venom affects the vascular system. Within a few minutes to few hours, the bitten area rapidly swells, followed by severe haemorrhaging, discolouring and blistering. “The only accepted treatment for snakebite is poly or monovalent anti-venoms. Although anti-venoms are able to reduce mortality, they are unable to neutralize local tissue damage,” says Bannikuppe Vishwanath, scientist at University of Mysore and the corresponding author of the study.

A study published in 2016 showed that the venom of the saw-scaled viper works in an interesting manner – it triggers a specific type of white blood cells to discharge their DNA and create a filamentous network of DNA and proteins. This network acts like a trap, concentrating venom and preventing it from entering the blood circulation. The venom accumulates at the injected site and causes continued and exaggerated tissue damage. However, an enzyme that can degrade DNA – a DNase – could degrade this trap.

“We analyzed the mode of treatment by traditional folk healers for snakebite cases. They normally make poultice from more than one medicinal plant, then drink and also apply [it] on the bitten region,” says Vishwanath.

To investigate this, his team collected leaves of ten medicinal plants used to treat snakebite victims using the help of tribal communities in Western Ghats of Karnataka. Of all the tested plants, the proteins isolated from T. tricuspidata showed potent DNase activity, prompting them to purify and test this plant extract further.

T. tricuspidata, has been used by local tribal communities of Nasik district in Maharashtra to treat snakebites, but there have been no scientific reports to show their potency. When saw-scaled viper venom was injected into the tails of mice, cells started dying from the third day and by the tenth day, the tail detaches displaying extensive tissue damage. On a tissue injury score of 1 to 10, venom-injected tails scored 10. When DNase enzyme purified from the leaves of T. tricuspidata was injected 30 minutes after the venom injection into rat tails, there was significant improvement in their shape and structure, with the injury score reducing to 0 on the tenth day.

The viper venom is also rich in enzymes that can break down proteins and one of key molecules it targets is collagen– a protein that strengthens and supports the structure of several tissues, such as bone, tendons, and skin. Tails with injected venom showed almost complete loss of collagen by day 10, confirming breach in the integrity of tissues. The addition of DNase from T. tricuspidata reversed this damage, with the tail tissue showing near-normal levels of collagen by day 10.

“Snake venom is a mixture of toxins and the plant extracts are also mixture of secondary metabolites,” comments Vishwanath. Currently, Vishwanath and his colleagues have characterized more than 30 different active plant components which work against specific venom toxins. He proposes, “These small molecules along with plant DNase and protease application shall complement the anti-venom therapy”

Rakhi Dandona, scientist at Public Health Foundation of India comments, “India needs to prioritise snakebite control on an urgent basis and increase access to anti-venom for survival of victims”. She adds, “Such alternate treatments may have a role to treat secondary complications related to snakebite.”

The Workshop for Women in Science Journalism was held from 12 to 15 November 2018, at the sprawling green campus of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore. Jointly organised by British Council India through the Newton-Bhabha Fund and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, and supported by IndiaBioscience, this workshop was aimed at providing training to women in science who are considering a career in science journalism.

This event commenced with a day-long orientation session, which included talks from several experienced science communicators. The inaugural session included opening remarks by Janaka Pushpanathan (British Council (South India)), Harinath Chakrapani (IISER Pune) and Smita Jain (IndiaBioscience). The keynote speaker, D. Balasubramanian (LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad) remarked, “Our job as science communicators is to show how exciting the scientific approach can be, and how it can lead to a more rational way of thinking at societal and national levels.”

While Balasubramanian discussed the essential elements of a popular science article, Shannon Olsson (NCBS, Bengaluru) stressed on the need to tell a story in both popular science articles as well as technical ones. Olsson weaved her talk into an engaging account of her personal journey from a seven year old, who won the first prize in a science fair, to a chemical ecologist.

Aashima Dogra spoke about her project ‘The Life of Science’ where she travels to different labs all over the country, documenting the success stories of women scientists. Subhra Priyadarshini, from Nature India, highlighted the importance of beginning an article with the most newsworthy piece of information. Other speakers included Jyoti Ranjan (SynTalk, Mumbai), Jahnavi Phalkey (Science Gallery, Bengaluru) and HS Sudhira (Gubbi Labs, Bengaluru). The orientation session was concluded by an overview of the topics that workshop would cover.

Rebecca Smith-McGloin and Heather Sears, from Coventry University (UK), conducted an intensive three-day workshop, which was tailored to the professional science journalism scenario in India. The first day of the workshop began with an analysis of the current job opportunities. The participants learned about two possible routes into science journalism - one route involves entering mainstream journalism as a general reporter and then specialising in science stories while the other approach is to specialise in science or popular science writing before entering mainstream journalism. One way for beginners to obtain some work experience is by starting a personal blog or through freelancing and internships.

An in-depth discussion of job descriptions was followed by asking the participants to assess their skill sets and the possible gaps that need to be filled. The participants were given 20 minutes to come up with an ‘elevator pitch’. The first day concluded with a primer for the next day’s activities. It was also time for the first writing assignment of the workshop. Participants had to pick a research article and write about it in the style of a Nature News and Views article. Before the participants got to work (it had been a long time since many of them had had to do ‘homework’), Shreya Ghosh and Navodita Jain from IndiaBioscience briefly outlined the different science communication initiatives that IndiaBioscience has undertaken over the last few years.

The second day of the workshop focussed on different writing styles. It is imperative to bear the audience in mind when one writes a popular science article. The participants critiqued each other’s writing assignments, while learning the crucial elements of a good story: people, risks and novel ideas. As the day progressed, the participants were trained to differentiate between newspaper articles, press releases and blog posts, followed by detailed training sessions on how to write them. While the participants were polishing their writing skills, the last session ‘Building your CV for a career in science journalism’ set the tone for what was in store for the next day. At the end of the session, Devayani Khare discussed NCBS’s efforts in science outreach.

The last day of the workshop concentrated on developing interview skills of the participants, most of whom were interested in a career in science journalism. During the course of the workshop, the participants got a chance to enrich their skills and recognize the areas where they needed improvement. They also obtained a glimpse of the various opportunities that are available in this field. As the workshop drew to a close, the instructors ensured that each participant had a plan in place to chart out their respective careers.

This is the third iteration of this workshop, the previous two versions having been held at IISER, Pune. Most of the participants expressed an interest in continuing to write about science, including for IndiaBioscience, in the future. Twenty selected participants from amongst the attendees will proceed to the Level 2 of this workshop, to be held in Pune in January, 2019.

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It was the summer of 1954. Barely a year had passed since Watson and Crick had published their double-helical model of DNA structure. A letter was published in Nature that August, by a little-known group of scientists based in Madras, India. The paper proposed a model for the structure of collagen, the most abundant protein in the human body. This structure – a triple helix of amino acid chains wound around each other – would come to be known informally as the ‘Madras’ model, and the scientist proposing it, GN Ramachandran, would go on to create the famous ‘Ramachandran’ plot to understand protein structures, the stuff of textbooks today.

Over sixty years after this seminal discovery, another group of Indian researchers have come up with a way to objectively assess the amounts of collagen in injured tissues using a method they call ‘optical biopsy’ and to use the same to monitor wound healing, a finding that may help burn victims throughout the country.

An estimated 60-70 lakh Indians suffer burn injuries every year. Nearly 10% of these injuries are severe enough to require hospitalization and almost half of these patients succumb to their injuries. During the treatment of burn injuries, it is crucial to assess the progress of healing in the wounded tissue. This is usually done by monitoring the amount of collagen, the major structural component of the extracellular matrix in our body.

The ‘gold standard’ method to achieve this so far has been to perform histopathological analysis on tissue excised from around the burnt area. Unfortunately, this method involves tissue biopsy, which may be painful for the victims, and requires a trained clinician to perform a subjective assessment of the stained and processed tissue sample.

Krishna K. Mahato, a physicist by training, entered the field of fluorescence-based diagnostics when he joined Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India. He and his team have come up with a way to measure the progress of wound healing by assessing collagen levels using a method called Laser Induced Fluoroscence (LIF). This method, which the researchers validated in both animal models and clinical samples, relies on a property of collagen which allows it to emit light at a certain wavelength when laser light of a different wavelength is shone on it. This emitted light, or ‘fluorescence’, can be measured using a detector and used to estimate the amount of collagen present in the tissue.

In their most recent study published in The Journal of Biophotonics, the researchers collected tissue biopsy samples from 20 burn wound victims admitted to Kasturba Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India. For each of these samples, they performed biochemical analysis, as well as Laser Induced Fluoroscence (LIF) measurements. The results from the two methods correlated well. The LIF method adds the benefits of being rapid, only taking 30 seconds to 1 minute per sample for assessment (once set up) and of not requiring highly trained personnel. “Any layman can do the experiment. It is not subjective, it is objective assessment,” said Vijendra Prabhu, the first author of the study.

“We found a very good environment here between the scientists, engineers and clinicians,” said Mahato, underlining the importance of such interdisciplinary collaborations. “The good part is that they have correlated it with the biochemistry and that is the strongest point of this paper,” said Asima Pradhan from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, who was not associated with this study. She suggested that the authors increase the number of samples for future studies and try to move the assessment process in vivo, i.e. eliminate the need for tissue biopsy.

This is a future direction the authors expressed interest in as well. In their preclinical studies, the authors have been able to use LIF to track collagen content and wound healing in vivo by simply implanting an optical fibre in the injured tissue. The researchers are hoping to use this method, which does not require excised tissue, in clinical studies in the future.

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A recent study found the prevalence of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) to be nearly 12% in Indian children aged 2-9 years, providing a much-needed peek into some of the major health problems faced by the country. Nearly 1 in every 8 children might be suffering from at least one of the NDDs sampled by the researchers, a figure that the authors believe may actually be conservative due to the limited scope of their study. The massive scale of the study was the result of collaborative effort from a number of institutions, departments, medical colleges and NGOs across India and USA.

“One of the primary motivating factors of taking up this work was the lack of conclusive numbers obtained from the national census,” says Vikram Patel, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, study author and a founding member of Sangath, an NGO based out of Goa.

The sites selected for sampling (Kangra, Palwal, Dhenkanal, Hyderabad and North Goa) reflected heterogeneity in terrain, literacy and rural-urban demography. The researchers studied 9 disorders in total: vision impairment, epilepsy, neuromotor impairments including cerebral palsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disorders (LDs), hearing impairment, speech and language disorders, autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and intellectual disability (ID). Seven, excluding ADHD and LD, were applicable to the age group of 2-6, while all were studied for the age group of 6-9.

The researchers decided to sample 1000 children each from three of these sites and 500 each from the other two, though the eventual number of 3977 fell slightly short of the projected 4000. The authors admit that the road to diagnosis was not an easy one. It required special capacity building, complex tools or methods and trained personnel that are not readily available in India. “We had to prepare training modules and conduct workshops for all the personnel involved in the assessments,” says Narendra Arora, executive director, INCLEN Trust, and corresponding author of the study.

The process required the researchers to identify diagnostic tools for the disorders which could be validated in the Indian context. For some of the NDDs such as autism, ADHD, epilepsy and neuromotor impairments including cerebral palsy, it also meant investing time and resources into first developing these tools. “Some of the internationally available ones have to be paid royalty every time they get used for patient diagnosis,” explains Arora.

The upside for the Indian community is that these tools are now available in the public domain for anyone to use. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment along with the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RSBK, a national child program launched by the Ministry of Health) have taken them up for certification of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

The authors used these methods to identify several risk factors that increase the chances of children acquiring NDDs. These include complications that arise during child delivery such as low birth weight (<2.5 kg), delayed crying or difficulty in breathing, illness acquired post birth, brain infections and premature delivery. The researchers also found that many children were born outside institutional support like hospitals and this contributed significantly to the risk for NDDs. Importantly, the researchers found no evidence in support for gender, rural/urban residence or religion acting as risk factors. The results also pointed toward site-specific variation in NDD prevalence (ranging from 2.9% to nearly 18%).

“This evidence is important for efficient and effective allocation of resources in the context of the Universal Health Care (UHC) agenda of the Government of India and RBSK,” says Arora. For basic researchers studying mental health, the study provides a way to develop India specific targeted solutions as well.

“It is a landmark study not only for clinicians, public health workers and policymakers in India, but also for basic researchers studying these disorders using animal models or stem cells,” says Aditi Bhattacharya, Reader at the Centre for Brain Development and Repair, inStem. Patel and Arora believe that specific and accessible targeting of these risk factors along with developing biomarkers for better diagnosis would prove substantial in addressing the prevalence of NDDs in India.

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Remember the crow that taught us ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way?’ It went on to build a promising research career studying circadian rhythms with a part-time job preaching life’s little lessons. Decades later, it is back with a new story and a new moral on how to get a good night’s sleep.

A team of researchers led by Vinod Kumar at the IndoUS Center for Biological Timing, University of Delhi recently discovered that exposure to artificial light during night disrupts the biological clock ticking inside us. This, in turn, adversely impacts the brain region involved in cognition and mood, resulting in reduced sleep and increased risk for mood disorders.

The human brain is programmed to be active during the day and to rest during the dark hours. This 24-hour internal biological clock, also called the circadian rhythm, determines our sleep/wake cycle. When it is dark at night, the brain receives a signal to release melatonin. This makes our body feel tired and coaxes it into sleep. Artificial light at night disrupts the circadian rhythm by altering melatonin levels, thereby influencing sound sleep, and consequently our mental and physical well-being.

To understand behavioural alterations caused by artificial illumination at night, the researchers used adult Indian crows as a model system. These birds have remarkable cognitive abilities at par with mammals and are diurnal creatures that rely on visual and auditory cues, much like humans. The scientists exposed the crows to dim light at night and found that it significantly reduced the daily rest period of the crows. This seemed to affect the crows’ mood as well, as they reduced their food intake and spent less time grooming themselves. Interestingly, this behaviour was reversible. When dark nights were restored, the crows resumed normal eating and self-grooming behaviours.

“Working with a non-model wild species was challenging,” says Taufique. “It demanded a standardisation of all behavioural patterns and measures to study the effects on sleep behaviour and mood,” adds Abhilash Prabhat, an author on the study.

When the team investigated the plasma melatonin levels of the crows that experienced illumination at night, they found that melatonin levels at night had dropped down to near daytime levels. At the cellular level, they found that exposure to light at night suppressed new neuron formation and compromised neuronal health in the hippocampus, the brain region involved in learning and mood. The genes associated with depressive-like responses were also observed to be negatively influenced. In addition, the researchers found transcriptional and epigenetic changes that may underlie the night-time illumination-induced negative effects in crows.

Artificial light at night has rapidly transformed the 24-hour day-night cycle. While the sight of a beautifully lit up city at night may be aesthetically pleasing, the associated health consequences are far from being so. Reports have linked excessive and repeated night time light exposure with sleep disorders, obesity, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder, and cancer.

“The value of this study lies in significant behavioural dysregulation noted in crows, a species with which humans share urban ecosystems,” says Aurnab Ghose, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, who was not associated with this study.

It is important to understand how biological clocks work and keep time. Light in particular is an important synchroniser for these clocks, and has been shown to be effective in the treatment of circadian rhythm disorders. Our very own crow has spent many sleepless nights to uncover the risks to diurnal animals and humans living in an overly lighted urban ecosystem. “Studies like this, therefore, become important at the level of understanding animal physiology and awareness of ecological consequences of human activities and choices. The richness and diversity of such studies is something that makes possibilities of interventions more plausible,” says Ghose.

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In a recent study, scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bangalore, and University of Hyderabad developed a simple assay to show that neurons are shaped by attachment to the substrate underneath them.

In certain respects, neurons behave similar to a bloodhound searching for a scent. Long projections of nerve cells, called axons, traverse through tissues to find partners with whom they can form synapses. As these axons travel, neurons often experience pulling forces due to the normal growth of tissues. Such pulling forces can force axons to elongate and shorten, shaping the network. “The sciatic nerve can experience local stretch of up to 30% during regular limb movement,” says Aurnab Ghose, Associate Professor at IISER Pune and the corresponding author of the study.

Neurons have a property called “prestress”. Try cutting a taut rubber band – it breaks and instantly rebounds. This taut rubber band is said to have “prestress” or pre-existing stress, even before an external load is applied. “Maintenance of prestress is critical for signaling in neurons,” says Ghose, “Imagine a rope held between two points. If the rope is taut, pulling one end results in an instantaneous response at the other end. If the rope is slack, then the propagation of the stress is damped.”

How do cells get prestressed? Two major cytoskeletal structures inside neurons are actin and microtubules. Actin is 7–10 nm thick, usually present in bundles of 10–300 actin filaments, and can contract with the help of other proteins inside cell. The pre-stressed state of a cell arises from the ‘contractility’ of the actin fibers. Microtubules are thick (~50 nm) hollow tubular structures which act like struts inside a cell to resist compression. These two structures together maintain and support the cell structure.

Previous studies to test prestress in neurons have employed harsh methods, using microneedles or lasers to cut the neurons which make it difficult to distinguish if the effects observed are due to the prestress or physical damage to neurons.

In the present study, the researchers use two novel non-invasive methods to test contractility of neurons. In one method, they used an enzyme (Trypsin) which dissolves proteins that connect a neuron to its substrate. In the second method, they used a patterned substrate where instead of a continuous layer, the substrate consists of isolated islands of extracellular matrix proteins.

The researchers isolated and grew neurons from chick embryos on plates coated with poly-D-lysine substrate. When they treated the neurons with Trypsin , the neurons reduced in length and transformed from curved to straight within just 10–20 seconds. This suggests that neurons naturally contract and try to achieve minimum length, unless they are opposed by attachments to the underlying substrate. They also found that this was dependent on actin, not microtubules.

Ghose’s team found that different neurons respond differently to detachment from the substrate – with some neurons shortening at a faster rate compared to others. There were also differences in contractility within a single neuron. The authors propose that this could arise from internal differences in contractility. To understand this, try cutting a few rubber bands with different elasticities – each will rebound differently.

Apart from signaling, contractility in neurons can also contribute to patterning of the brain. “Contractility has been linked to buckling of membranes, resulting in the creation of folds, which are characteristic of the cortex, and can lead to patterning in the brain,” says Namrita Gundiah, Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore) who was not associated with the study. She adds, “This study addresses a fundamental question of how contractility in neurons influences neuron networks and patterning in the brain using a simple and elegant method”.

The Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance and the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) jointly facilitated the India-EMBO Symposium recently held at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), Manesar. The symposium spanned across four days (15 - 18 October) and witnessed the coming together of luminaries in the field of molecular neuroscience, both national and international. The thrust of the meeting was memory formation and dysfunction, with a strong focus on RNA-based mechanisms that regulate memory at the molecular level.

The event commenced with a keynote lecture by Thomas Carew, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Science at the Centre for Neural Science, New York University. Engaging one and all with his idiosyncratic style of delivering science, he urged the audience to think out loud with him as he discussed the molecular architecture of long-term memory formation in an extensively studied invertebrate system, sea slugs (Aplysia).

The role of non-coding and micro RNAs has emerged as a contemporary theme in understanding the mechanisms of memory, displacing earlier notions that these RNAs are merely products of spurious transcription and do not serve a direct purpose in the cell since they are not translated to proteins. The meeting took an interdisciplinary approach, and was conducted across various segments with themes ranging from non-coding RNAs in nerve regeneration to novel methodologies for RNA detection.

Both young as well as established scientists from India put forth their findings in the international circuit through the symposium. Young PhD scholars and post-doctoral fellows presented their work through short talks and poster presentations, which gave them an opportunity to strike a dialogue with people from the field and receive feedback about their research findings. According to Sumantra Chattarji from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, the meeting has been one of a kind in India. He addressed the gathering with the latest research from his laboratory on the modulation of specific as well as indiscriminate fear in rat models by the activation of a common receptor in amygdala, the fear centre of the brain.

The chief organiser of the symposium, Sourav Bannerjee (NBRC), highlighted the importance of the meeting in forming a global nexus of scientists and discussing the latest tools that have evolved in the last 20 years of the development of the field . “Some techniques have revolutionised how we study newly synthesised proteins,” he said, pointing out that Erin Schumann, (Director, Max Plank Institute for Brain Research), the discoverer of two such important techniques - FUNCAT and BONCAT, was present at the meeting. “This gave a unique opportunity for the participants to be motivated by the pertinent questions in the field of synaptic regulation of memory,” he added.

Esther Schnapp, senior scientific editor at EMBO reports, brought forth issues of scientific writing and publishing through an evening platform discussion. She elaborated on the ecosystem of research assessment at EMBO, and the importance of transparent reviews and minimally processed source data in maintaining standards of a quality journal. Bela Desai, Grants Adviser at the Wellcome trust/ DBT India Alliance, stressed on the importance of asking good research questions and maintaining consistencies in the budget proposed for a successful grant application.

The meeting was also supplemented by an informal discussion on managing one’s scientific career, mediated by Erin Schumann (Max Plank Institute for Brain Research, Germany), Thomas Carew (New York University (NYU), USA), Giovanna Mallucci (University of Cambridge, UK), Ted Abel (co-organiser of the conference, University of Iowa, USA), Eric Klann (NYU,USA) and Esther Schnapp (EMBO Press, Germany). From a medical doctor heading the UK Dementia research program to a scientific editor making publishing decisions for EMBO reports, the panel was an eclectic mix that offered a wide range of opinions for young researchers about conducting research rewardingly while maintaining a work-life balance.

The proceedings of this meeting will be published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. The next EMBO workshop will be held at NCBS from 4th to 7th February 2019, titled “Molecular Neuroscience: From genes to circuits in health and disease.”

“Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted” - Sylvia Earle

An underwater dive in a coral reef is a mesmerizing experience. Amongst the many vibrant life forms present, one that is crucial for maintaining reef health is the butterflyfish. Now, with coral reefs under threat worldwide, a new study shows that certain butterflyfish species can show remarkable pliancy in their behaviour following reef bleaching. This study highlights how marine species deal with stressful events and habitat loss.

Over the last three decades, human-induced changes in global sea temperatures have given rise to a phenomenon called bleaching. Corals live in an interdependent relationship with an alga which is crucial for reef ecosystem health. When sea temperatures rise, the corals expel this algae causing the corals to lose their colour and appear white (hence ‘bleached’), and eventually die. Several species of butterflyfish are dependent on corals for food and are often referred to as “obligate corallivores”. In an event of bleaching, what happens to these fish? Do they survive or perish?

To investigate this, scientists led by Amod Zambre from the National Centre for Biological Sciences and Wildlife Conservation Society-India programme and Rohan Arthur from Nature Conservation Foundation examined the densities and feeding behaviour of Melon butterflyfish across three reefs in the Lakshadweep Islands that varied in terms of their bleaching mortality and thereby the coral cover post the 2010 El Niño event.

While densities of two butterflyfish species (Chaetodon meyeri and Chaetodon collare) were poor in the island that had the highest reef mortality due to bleaching, one of the species Chaetodon trifasciatus was able to persist at similar densities across bleached and unbleached reefs. This provoked the authors to examine how these species behaviourally adapt to bleached reefs.

The authors used high resolution video recording of several individuals of Chaetodon trifasciatus to estimate the time spent feeding, diet choice and number of morsels eaten by the fish while feeding across the reefs. They found that in the bleached reefs, Chaetodon trifasciatus spent less time feeding and more time travelling between coral patches, when compared to the reefs which had more live coral cover. In the bleached reefs, the fishes ate more morsels of coral and were not particular about their choice of food.

While such behavioural patterns provide important cues as to how species respond to environmental changes, the authors fear that these effects could be temporary. “Flexibility in foraging can buffer effects of bleaching only for a limited time. Though this behavioural change may be useful, it does not mean that they are immune to bleaching and populations may eventually crash,” says Zambre.

Nonetheless, the ability to forage in resource poor reefs demonstrates the adaptability of Chaetodon trifasciatus which allows it to live in sub-optimal conditions. “Understanding behavioural mechanisms that allow animals to cope with environmental stressors provides valuable insights on how populations are likely to respond to environmental change,” says Kavita Isvaran, a scientist at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, who was not associated with the study.

Though there are costs and limits to the flexibility in feeding strategies of Melon butterflyfish, this does allow them to persist on bleached reefs, longer than most other species. On healthy reefs, these fishes spent most of their time (~90%) feeding on corals. According to Zambre, though their numbers may eventually decline in bleached reefs, the extended persistence of these fish in these reefs may have important consequences for post-bleaching reef recovery.

Coral-corallivore relationships in marine environments can be compared to terrestrial plant-herbivore relationships. Ensuring the long term survival of both corals and corallivores is therefore important for the health and resilience of these reef systems.

“Khamosh se afsana, paani se likha hota,

Na tumne kaha hota, na humne suna hota”

- Gulzar

Secrecy of messages is imperative in romance and espionage alike; self-destructible secret messages provide an added thrill. Recently, a team of scientists devised a way to use sunlight as an invisible ink to write secret messages (instead of evanescing water as penned by Gulzar!).

On a hot summer morning, Manas K Panda (Scientist at the Photonics division, CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST), Thiruvananthapuram) left green fibrous crystals of a newly created compound on a piece of filter paper. He forgot to observe the crystals the next day - and the next, until a chance observation 15 days later. While he remembered the crystals to be green in color on the day of preparation, now they were orange-red.

Since Panda had been synthesizing compounds that could switch fluorescence, he instinctively observed the crystals under ultraviolet (UV) light. The crystals exhibited a shift in fluorescence– emission maximum was at 535nm for the green crystals, but at 640nm and 580nm for the orange-red. Panda observed that compared to the luminescence shift, the fluorescence shift was much more remarkable.

What happened in those 15 days? Panda and his team had synthesized a chemical (which they named Compound 1) that altered fluorescent properties based on its solvent. When Compound 1 was precipitated from DMSO (dimethylsulfoxide, a polar solvent), it fluoresced in the green spectra. However, when the residual DMSO entrapped in the crystals evaporated, either rapidly on heating, or slowly on exposure to sunlight (or on leaving it at room temperature for days, as Panda had done), the crystal began to fluoresce in the red spectra. This fluorescence (or luminescence) switching property is known as solvent-dependent vapochromism.

Vapochromic compounds offer an interesting use – they can serve as invisible ink for steganography, the practice of hiding a secret message within a seemingly innocuous script. Most biological fluids (blood, urine and semen) have been used as invisible inks - interesting accounts of their use come from the period around WWII. Shining UV light (or applying a little chemistry) allows access to these messages. These properties of biological compounds have inspired chemists to synthesize sophisticated, responsive and destructible inks.

Panda and co-authors put the vapochromic feature of Compound 1 to use in this manner: they rubbed the fibrous crystals of Compound 1 on a sheet of cellulose paper and selectively exposed portions of the paper to sunlight by overlaying with a stencil, allowing the exposed areas to fluoresce differently than the unexposed region. Since the change in color of the Compound 1 on the cellulose paper was too minute to be detected by the naked eye, the code could only be read under UV light. To destroy the message, the cellulose paper could either be heated or exposed to intense sunlight, essentially evaporating entrapped DMSO from the portions masked by the stencil, making the original message illegible.

Many scientific groups have been working on fluorescent compounds (with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as template), which have garnered attention as potential tools for confidential data communication – however, compared to a sheet of cellulose paper they are expensive. Panda suggests two other advantages over MOFs: “There is no threat of heavy metal exposure, and cellulose papers can be re-used multiple times.” With the help of a few collaborators, his team plans to pursue biological research on the cytotoxicity of Compound 1.

Could this method be reversible? Panda says, “We have tested the reversibility of sunlight-pen writing for 3-4 cycles. However, it greatly depends on the life of the cellulose paper.” He also points out that an advantage of his method is that on a laboratory scale, the purification of the compound is easy, since it easily precipitates out. “The issue of scalability needs to be taken up,” he adds.

Bipin Kumar Gupta, scientist at the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (not associated with the study) finds this approach unique and creative. However, he is concerned about the stability of the compound and did not find the quality of printing to be very crisp and sharp. “Confidential data communication requires rapid destruction, however exposure to sunlight would take the message about 4 hours to destroy,” he adds.

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In April 2018, three people in Odisha died from cholera after drinking “pana”- a ritualistic drink that was made from pond water of the village. In India, around eight lakh cholera cases were reported between 2004 to 2008 due to contaminated water.

In a recent study, researchers led by Chandradipa Ghose from Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, found that Vibrio cholerae, the cholera-causing bacterium, communicates with other bacteria in its vicinity and uses flagella, a whip-like structure, to survive and attach to surfaces in water bodies. This increases its survival potential, leading to the emergence of epidemics.

Vibrio cholerae thrives in aquatic habitats. One of the ways by which it survives is forming biofilms on biotic or abiotic surfaces. Biofilms consist of microbial communities embedded in an extensive matrix of exopolysaccharides (EPS). Cholera bacteria use quorum sensing, a cell-cell communication method where a cell can gauge the density of cells around it, to form biofilms. In this mode of communication, bacteria release a signalling molecule which is then sensed by their neighbours. When the concentration of this signalling molecule is high, the bacteria assume high cell density in their vicinity and secrete EPS, leading to the formation of biofilms.

To determine the role of this communication in the spread of cholera, the researchers mutated the genes which synthesise autoinducer – the quorum sensing signalling molecule – in the bacterial strain that caused a cholera epidemic in Kolkata in 1992. There are two types of autoinducers in Vibrio – autoinducer 1, which is involved in communicating with fellow Vibrio bacteria, and autoinducer 2, which communicates with other bacterial species. The researchers found that bacteria which could not synthesise either or both of these signalling molecules secreted higher EPS matrix, had wrinkled cell surfaces (as opposed to smooth), and produced more biofilms. All of these traits contribute to increasing the cholera bacteria’s persistence in variable surroundings.

Vibrio is a highly motile bacterium with a single flagellum on one end. The flagellum not only propels the bacteria, but also doubles as a sensory organ to explore the surfaces around it. The researchers found that removing the flagellum by deleting the gene which creates it also generated similar effects as mutating the quorum sensing signalling molecules - higher EPS matrix expression, wrinkled surface, and greater biofilm production. “This alternate mechanism was observed in a group of Vibrio cholerae that are highly toxigenic and virulent,” states Ghose.

The researchers found that for these two players in cholera pathogenesis - flagella and quorum sensing - one signalling pathway becomes predominant in the absence of the other. The increase in EPS in the absence of autoinducers is brought about by the flagella, while the increase in EPS in the absence of flagella is dependent on autoinducers.

How does this system work in real life?

When Vibrio numbers are low in a local aquatic ecosystem, the concentration of secreted autoinducer molecules in the water is also less. This leads to a flagella-dependent increase in EPS production, wrinkled surface, and biofilm generation, establishing a stable Vibrio population. “EPS signalling provides adaptive features for the pathogen to survive in different environments by inducing rapid biofilm forming ability,” says T Ramamurthy, scientist at Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, who was not involved in the study. Interestingly, wrinkled cells with excess EPS also show increased expression of toxins which contribute to the diarrhoea and dehydration associated with cholera.

“This study establishes an alternate biofilm signalling mechanism that comes into action by the interaction of quorum sensing autoinducers with flagellar structure,” says Ghosh. The presence of biofilm protects the bacteria from changes in its environment and EPS makes it more potent – potentially triggering a cholera epidemic.

During pregnancy, a large number of women experience sleep disturbances. Now, a new study suggests that pregnancy-associated sleep perturbations could have a lasting effect on the physical and mental health of the baby. Researchers at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, used highly controlled animal experiments to evaluate the effects of sleep restriction during pregnancy on the brain development of offspring.

Sleep is a basic necessity for survival. Lack of sleep can lead to a weakened immune system, affect both short and long term memory, and has been shown to cause accidents and errors in the workplace. Disturbances in sleep in pregnant women have been well documented, with studies showing that such disturbances are associated with increased preterm birth, labour pain, and depression. In spite of this, very little is known about what effect such disruptions may have on the health of the child.

“Adverse effects of poor sleep in different age group populations have been studied to a certain extent. However, not much attention is paid to sleep disturbances caused during pregnancy,” said Kamalesh Gulia, senior author of the study.

Sleep consists of two distinct phases - non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. In this particular study, researchers restricted pregnant female rats from sleeping for 5 hours each day during the third trimester of pregnancy. The protocol abolished both NREM and REM sleep in these rats. Once pups were born to these dams, the researchers analysed their sleep-wake profiles during the first three weeks of life.

Gulia and her team observed that the pups born to sleep restricted dams had higher active sleep (precursor of adult REM sleep), but lower quiet sleep (precursor of adult NREM sleep) and wakefulness when compared to control pups.

The researchers next examined the effects of maternal sleep restriction on the brain activity of the offspring using electroencephalography (EEG) analysis. This test detects electrical activity in the brain using a set of electrodes that are attached to the scalp. The researchers observed changes in the properties of different brain waves in the brains of pups whose mothers had faced sleep restriction. Coupled with the increase in the ratio of active to quiet sleep in these pups, this observation indicated an immature brain at birth and delayed development of networks for sleep-wakefulness. Interestingly, these signs of delayed brain maturation in the pups born to sleep restricted dams are similar to signs of delayed maturation observed in premature babies.

“This study highlights the importance of sleep during pregnancy, but it also suggests that neonatal sleep monitoring can be used as a tool for early assessment of retarded brain development,” said Gulia.

“This is a voluminous study by the sleep research pioneers of India,” said Bindu Kutty, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, who was not involved with the study. “It is a truly unique study that has massive translational value. To further understand the developmental pattern, the study can be conducted on the same rat model at different time intervals,” she suggested.

This study provides an important insight into the ways maternal and offspring health are intertwined, and suggests that sleep problems should be monitored, identified, and taken seriously by doctors working with pregnant women.

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Once upon a time, there lived a frog prince. Cursed by a wicked witch, the frog waited for a kiss from a beautiful princess, which would turn him into a handsome prince. One fine day, a lovely princess would find him, but - the frog died of chytridiomycosis caused by a pathogenic fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd).

True story, if the frog was a sharp-snouted torrent frog, gastric brooding frog, southern day frog of Australia or one of the stream-breeding toads of Central and South America – all now extinct because of Bd.

Karthikeyan Vasudevan’s lab in the Laboratory for the CONservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES), Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, recently documented the status of Bd, the frog pathogen that causes the fungal disease chytridiomycosis, in India’s biodiversity hotspots. This first-ever nationwide survey reports that Bd does occur in Indian frog populations but with low disease prevalence and high haplotype diversity.

Unlike human skin, frog skin is thin, permeable to water and electrolytes, and helps frogs breathe. Infection with Bd causes the frog’s skin to thicken several folds making it impermeable. Frogs become lethargic, adopt abnormal postures with their hind limbs extended and lose their righting reflex when placed upside down. Within a few weeks of the infection, frogs die of osmotic imbalance and cardiac arrest.

Several species of frogs have been pushed to the brink of extinction by Bd worldwide, but very little was known until now about its status in the frog populations of India. “With over 375 different species of frogs, most of which are endemic, the stakes were high for India,” said Vasudevan.

Vasudevan and his team tested 1870 frogs from the biodiversity hotspots in India. Each frog was arduously hand-caught and stroked 70 times with a cotton swab to collect the fungal spores on its body. After an examination for clinical symptoms, the frogs were released into the wild, and the swabs brought back to the lab. About 8% of the frogs were positive for Bd suggesting that India is a ‘cold spot’, a region with a low prevalence of the disease. While this is good news, it is also exciting because cold spots are valuable for understanding the disease and finding solutions for its treatment.

An interesting feature of cold spots is that they harbour multiple endemic haplotypes of the pathogen, which may have evolved due to host-pathogen co-evolution. 80% of the Bd haplotypes identified by Vasudevan’s group were endemic or unique to India. Identifying and monitoring different haplotypes with sensitive assays is vital for understanding the dynamics of the disease. However, the researchers found that current assays failed to detect many endemic haplotypes and need to be improved.

Just like lions, wolves and elephants, frogs are an important part of our ecosystem. “The low prevalence of Chytridiomycosis gives us a little respite,” said Abhijit Das from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, who was not associated with this study, “However, with the ongoing climate change, the situation may switch. We need more sampling and monitoring of Bd status, especially in our protected areas”.

With a success rate of about one in five, capturing these nocturnal creatures isn’t an easy task. Milind Mutnale and Lilly Eluvathingal, two of the researchers who conducted this study, have several exciting stories born out of their fieldwork. “When you are out in the wild, you surprise the animals first,” said Lilly. Encountering a wild elephant immediately calls for abandoning plans and quietly backing away from the area. “It’s hard, because as a researcher one wants every data from every site. But always, safety first!” said Lilly.

The lab is now interested in monitoring the persistence of Bd throughout a frog’s lifespan and studying the influence of frog skin secretions and its resident microbiome on the infection. For anyone interested in checking in on the frog in their backyard, LaCONES offers Bd diagnostic services.

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Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a transparent roundworm, is a popular inhabitant of many labs. These worms show several repetitive behaviors, including defecation, where the worm undergoes a cycle of muscle constrictions to expel faeces every 45 seconds. In 2005, scientists discovered that by removing a single gene made the worms defecate with a faster frequency − this gene was called flr-4.

More than a decade later, this gene has made a comeback, but in a very different story.

In a recent study, scientists led by Arnab Mukhopadhyay at the National Institute of Immunology (NII) found that when they knocked down flr-4, worms had 40−60% longer lifespan.

The survival of an organism depends on how widely it can adapt their diet. For example, giant pandas, whose main diet is bamboo shoot, are on the verge of extinction due to diminishing bamboo covers. However, different diets lead to different metabolic rates, which in turn affect the lifespan of an individual (higher metabolic rates are associated with shorter lifespan and vice versa). How do animals balance between adapting to consume different kinds of diet and maintaining their lifespans?

This is where genes which maintain consistent lifespans in response to different diets come in. These are called ‘gene-diet’ pairs, where specific genes regulate the organism’s lifespan upon consuming specific diets. “There are only a few gene-diet pairs known to us that regulate longevity. Gene-diet pairs are interesting to study as they imply that in wild-type animals, the effect of the diet on life span is suppressed to maintain homeostasis. Only when the gene is mutated, you observe the effect,” said Mukhopadhyay.

The protein coded by flr-4, a kinase, preferentially phosphorylates two amino acid groups in proteins. To understand the effect of this gene on lifespan, the researchers made a mutant where they abolished this phosphorylation activity. These mutant worms were then fed two different diets− one was the standard diet of C. elegans, B strain of E.coli bacteria, while the second diet was the H strain of E.coli. B strain has lower carbohydrate content and promotes higher fat storage. The researchers found that mutant worms lived much longer when fed on H strain of E.coli compared to the B strain, while wild-type worms maintained equal lifespans on the two bacterial diets.

To understand how this gene regulates homeostasis on different diets, the researchers investigated which genes and pathways get altered when they inactivated flr-4. They found that when worms with no flr-4 activity are fed with the H strain of E.coli, they have increased levels of a set of genes that are known to protect cells against harmful agents. This could possibly explain the increased lifespan of mutant worms fed with H strain. Mukhopadhyay and his team propose that flr-4 phosphorylates a yet-unknown substrate and this activity is required to maintain lifespan equilibrium when consuming different kinds of diets.

Intriguingly, flr-4 is expressed in both neurons and intestine, and reducing the expression of this gene in either tissue extends lifespan. Although the role of gut in regulating the response to different diets may be intuitive, what is the role of neurons? “It is possible that the neuronal circuit is required for smell/taste while the intestinal network identifies nutrients that the food releases,” said Mukhopadhyay. But the exact role of neurons in extending lifespan and which component of food interacts with flr-4 gene are questions which the team is now beginning to probe.

“The fact that multiple tissues of an organism, including neurons, muscles as well as intestine participate in life span regulation shows how a complex signalling network is required to maintain normal physiology within an organism to ensure optimal life span,” said Kavita Babu, Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali, who was not involved in this study.

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Nephrotic syndrome is one of the most common kidney disorders, characterised by excessive protein in the urine, swelling in the legs, feet and ankles, and increased levels of albumin and lipids in the blood of patients. It has a high level of incidence in Asian countries, particularly amongst children (9-16 per 100000 children every year). Now, in a massive international collaborative effort, researchers from India, Germany, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Japan, Serbia, Switzerland, Austria, Kazakhstan and Canada have identified variants in six novel genes which may be responsible for causing this disorder.

Inside the kidney, glomeruli are networks of capillaries that filter blood. In patients of nephrotic syndrome, damage to the glomeruli lets proteins and red blood cells leak into the urine. The conventional treatment regimen consists of administration of steroids, which have limited effectiveness. Based on whether or not patients respond to steroid treatment, the disorder is classified as Steroid Sensitive Nephrotic Syndrome (SSNS) and Steroid Resistant Nephrotic Syndrome (SRNS).

Previous studies have found mutations in more than 40 genes to be associated with steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome. These studies also suggest that many of these gene products localize to podocytes, cells in the kidney that help flush out toxins from the blood. However, only one gene has till date been shown to monogenetically cause steroid-sensitive nephrotic syndrome, and the mechanism of steroid resistance remains a mystery.

In this new study, researchers analysed multiple families with nephrotic syndrome and identified mutations in six novel genes (MAGI2, CDK20, TNS2, DLC1, ITSN1 and ITSN2) as causative factors in 17 families with partially treatment-sensitive nephrotic syndrome (which falls somewhere in the border between steroid-resistant and steroid-sensitive variants of the disease).

To understand the role these genes play in the pathophysiology of the nephrotic syndrome, the researchers evaluated the effect of overexpression and knockdown of all six genes in cell lines. They observed that the proteins encoded by these genes interact to regulate the activity of Rho like small GTPases - a class of proteins that has previously been implicated in the pathogenesis of nephrotic syndrome. The mutant variants of these genes found in the partially treatment-sensitive patients, however, lacked this effect.

Interestingly, steroid treatment abolished the effect of two of these genes (DLC1 and CDK20) on Rho like small GTPases in cell lines as well as in cultured human podocytes. This suggests that regulation of this activity may be a possible mechanism for beneficial steroid action.

“This study provides insight into the possible molecular basis of nephrotic syndrome as well as opens doors to explore newer therapeutics targeting Rho signaling activity,” says Dr Anil Vasudevan, Head of Pediatric nephrology at the St. Johns medical college hospital, Bangalore. “The weak correlations between genotype and phenotype exhibited in this study also reinforce the emerging paradigm that nephrotic syndrome may not be a classical ‘monogenic’ disease inherited in a Mendelian fashion,” he adds.

This study included researchers from Jamia Millia Islamia and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, and the Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children, Chennai.The results of this study lend support to an ongoing study funded by the Department of Biotechnology to examine the genetic basis of steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome. This new study will help in understanding the relevance of the TNS2 gene in Indian children with steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome by using the whole-exome sequencing approach.

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Confusion in species names not only impacts our understanding of how a species is faring under a range of anthropogenic threats, but also hampers conservation efforts for sustaining future populations in the wild. Such has been the case for the hump-backed mahseer, which after 145 years of first being publicised, has finally achieved clarity in terms of its scientific nomenclature. A recent study, led by Adrian Pinder from Bournemouth University, UK, used multiple lines of enquiry to resolve the taxonomy of this iconic fish.

This study was carried out in collaboration with scientists across several institutes in India, including Bharathiar University and Zoo Outreach Organization (ZOO), Coimbatore, Mahatma Gandhi College, Thiruvananthapuram, Nirmalagiri College, Kannur, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, Kochi and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

Mahseers, commonly referred to as “tigers of the water”, are large fish endemic to freshwater habitats in continental Asia. As a genus which can attain large sizes, these fish have been popular targets for recreational angling. However, variation in size and body coloration in these fish has resulted in taxonomic confusion.

The hump-backed mahseer, native to south India, is a prized catch and has iconic status with anglers across the globe. However, the species had existed without a proper scientific identity since it was first mentioned under its common name in a 1873 book about sport fishing in India. “This was perhaps because it was never recognized as being different and consequently there was no formal scientific description,” says Pinder, who is also the Director of Research at Mahseer Trust.

Pinder and colleagues carried out systematic body size measurements and molecular analysis for a range of mahseer specimens (Genus Tor). The authors included specimens from museum repositories and live fish samples of four different mahseer species: Tor khudree, Tor malabaricus, Tor remadevii and Tor putitora. They also sieved through historical photographs to decipher similarities in body size and colouration of the hump-backed mahseer with other mahseer species.

The researchers found that the hump-backed mahseer showed morphological and taxonomic characteristics similar to Tor remadevii, a species first described in 2007. Genetic studies, phylogenetic analyses and morphometric measurements confirmed these results. “Thus concluding that the giant hump-back is the same as T. remadevii,” says Pinder.

This is good news for conservation efforts directed towards protecting this iconic fish. “The hump-backed mahseer now having a valid scientific name means it can be Red Listed,” says Pinder. Tor remadevii is endemic to India, with a restricted distribution within the Western Ghats (Cauvery basin). In recent times, this habitat has been threatened by anthropogenic activities such as destructive fishing.

“Our recent interviews with local fishers suggest that the population of larger fish has drastically reduced in recent years,” says Pinder. The authors are already in the process of enlisting the species as Critically Endangered, which would be vital to conserve critical habitats and the existing populations.

“Unfortunately, there is dearth of a clear database on the status of several megafaunal fish species in tropical river systems, especially for countries like India, where studies on freshwater systems and their fauna are already sparse,” says Anuradha Bhat, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, a freshwater ecologist who was not associated with this study. “The recent work by Pinder et al. is a much needed and timely study on a critically endangered group of fishes.”

Now that the hump-backed mahseer finally has a scientific identity, it is anticipated there will be earnest efforts to conserve and secure the future of its remaining populations in the Cauvery basin.

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