Antifungal Potential of Four Aloe Species

Increase in the use of biologically based fungicides for controlling plant and human pathogens in the recent years have led to this research to determine the efficacy of solvent type, to determine the best species of aloe for breeding new variety with more potent biocides for controlling these fungal pathogens under reducing the use of synthetic fungicides which have long term adverse effect on the environment, plant and the end users. The biocides of the leaves and the roots of four species of aloe (Aloe keayi, Aloe macrocarpa var. major, Aloe schwenfurthii and Aloe vera) were extracted with four different solvents (i.e. acetone, ethanol, methanol and hot water) while their fungicidal properties were investigated against three fungal pathogens of crops (Sclerotium rolfsii, Trichoderma rubrum and Colletotrichum lindemuthiamum). The result shows that A. macrocarpa var. major and A. schwenfurthii are the most suitable parental genotypes for the breeding of an aloe with more potent biocides

RUNX3 polymorphism present in human oral squamous cell carcinoma

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is characterized by high incidence, mortality, post-management recurrence and metastatic rates as well as poor prognosis. This study was designed to identify molecular diagnostic and predictive signatures of OSCC in Nigerian cases. It was a retrospective-prospective case-control study spanning a 12 year period using 74 OSCC tissue blocks as well as benign epithelial lesions which served as control from which DNA was extracted and profiled for rs7528484 and rs760805 in RUNX3 gene by restriction fragment length polymorphism-PCR. Demography of the tissue blocks was recorded. Computed data were presented as frequencies/percentages. Association between RUNX3 polymorphism and patient's gender, age, tumor location, histology was assessed by Pearson's χ2 test at α0.05, Monte-Carlo exact test and Odds Ratios (OR) at Confidence Interval (CI) of 95%. Only rs7528484 was successfully genotyped with a distribution of 52.7% homozygote normal (CC), 28.4% heterozygote mutant (CT) and 18.9% homozygote mutant (TT). Gender and histology was generally significantly associated with genotypes/alleles. Genotypes CT and TT as well as the mutant allele T, showed odds of predicting OSCC. It appears that rs7528484 in RUNX3 might be common in patients suffering from OSCC. Individuals carrying the mutant allele could also be more susceptible to OSCC development

Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of some Nigerian Accessions of Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc) using DArT SNP Markers

Abstract Bambara groundnut is one of the crops with inadequate molecular research to show its full potentials. Previous studies showed morphological diversity with inadequate information to confirm genetic variations. In the quest to reveal the genetic potentials, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the selected accessions were extracted through leaf samples at 3 weeks old, using Dellaporta Miniprep for Plant DNA Isolation procedure. The high quality DNA was sequenced using Diversity Arrays Technology (DArT) markers to unlock diversity among Bambara groundnut of Nigerian origin. Cluster analysis (neighbor-joining clustering) of the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP’s) were used to generate sub-population to show relatedness and differences. Seven sub-populations were generated with 5,927 (50.13 %) high quality DArT markers out of the 11, 821 SNPs generated. This revealed high genetic diversity existed among the selected Bambara groundnut accessions in Nigeria. This also revealed that DArT markers were highly efficient in classifying the accessions based on molecular expressions. This study also identified markers responsible for genetic variation that could facilitate the characterization of larger collections for further utilization of genetic resources and most importantly Bambara groundnut for the purpose of crop improvement.</jats:p