Potential application of β-1, 3 glucanase from an environmental isolate of Pseudomonas aeruginosa MCCB 123 in fungal DNA extraction

Pseudomonas aeruginosa MCCB 123 was grown in a synthetic medium for β-1,3 glucanase production. From the culture filtrate, β-1,3 glucanase was purified with a molecular mass of 45 kDa. The enzyme was a metallozyme as its β-1,3 glucanase activity got inhibited by the metal chelator EDTA. Optimum pH and temperature for β-1,3 glucanase activity on laminarin was found to be 7 and 50 °C respectively. The MCCB 123 β-1,3 glucanase was found to have good lytic action on a wide range of fungal isolates, and hence its application in fungal DNA extraction was evaluated. β-1,3 glucanase purified from the culture supernatant of P. aeruginosa MCCB 123 could be used for the extraction of fungal DNA without the addition of any other reagents generally used. Optimum pH and temperature of enzyme for fungal DNA extraction was found to be 7 and 65 °C respectively. This is the first report on β-1,3 glucanase employed in fungal DNA extraction

Studies on Pseudoscalar Meson Bound States and Semileptonic Decays in a Relativistic Potential Model

In this thesis quark-antiquark bound states are considered using a relativistic two-body equation for Dirac particles. The mass spectrum of mesons includes bound states involving two heavy quarks or one heavy and one light quark. In order to analyse these states within a unified formalism, it is desirable to have a two-fermion equation that limits to one body Dirac equation with a static interaction for the light quark when the other particle's mass tends to infinity. A suitable two-body equation has been developed by Mandelzweig and Wallace. This equation is solved in momentum space and is used to describe the complete spectrum of mesons. The potential used in this work contains a short range one-gluon exchange interaction and a long range linear confining and constant potential terms. This model is used to investigate the decay processes of heavy mesons. Semileptonic decays are more tractable since there is no final state interactions between the leptons and hadrons that would otherwise complicate the situation. Studies on B and D meson decays are helpful to understand the nonperturbative strong interactions of heavy mesons, which in turn is useful to extract the details of weak interaction process. Calculation of form factors of these semileptonic decays of pseudo scalar mesons are also presented.

Studies on fungal flora with special reference to Yeasts in the Cochin backwaters

Man's concern with environmental deterioration is one of the major reasons for the increased interest in marine and estuarine microbes. Microbes form an important link in the biogeochemical cycling and their cyclinq activites often determine to a large measure the potential productivity of an ecosystem In the recycling of the nutrients in the estuary, bacteria and fungi therefore play a particularly significant role.The allochthonous plant materials contain biopolymers such as cellulose, lignin, humus etc., that are difficult to degrade into simpler substances. The fungi have the ability to degrade _substances, thereby making them available for cycling within the system. The present study is devoted to find the composition and the activity of myco populations of Cochin backwater. For convenience the thesis is divided into eight chapters. The opening chapter briefly reviews the literature and projects the importance of work and the main objectives. Second chapter discusses the materials and methods. In the third chapter the systematic and taxonomy of estuarine yeasts are examined in detail since this information is scarcely available for our waters. The general ecological aspects of the yeasts and filamentous fungi in the area of study are examined in the fourth chapter using appropriate statistical techniques. A special reference to the fungi in a small mangrove ecosystem is attempted in the fifth chapter. The biochemical studies are discussed in the sixth chapter and the penultimate chapter provides an overall discussion. In the last chapter the summary of the work is presented.