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It is evident from previous reports that 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA), like other known plant growth regulators, is effective in countering the injurious effects of heavy metal-stress in oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.). The present study was carried out to explore the capability of ALA to improve cadmium (Cd2+) tolerance in B. napus through physiological, molecular, and proteomic analytical approaches. Results showed that application of ALA helped the plants to adjust Cd2+-induced metabolic and photosynthetic fluorescence changes in the leaves of B. napus under Cd2+ stress. The data revealed that ALA treatment enhanced the gene expressions of antioxidant enzyme activities substantially and could increase the expression to a certain degree under Cd2+ stress conditions. In the present study, 34 protein spots were identified that differentially regulated due to Cd2+ and/or ALA treatments. Among them, 18 proteins were significantly regulated by ALA, including the proteins associated with stress related, carbohydrate metabolism, catalysis, dehydration of damaged protein, CO2 assimilation/photosynthesis and protein synthesis/regulation. From these 18 ALA-regulated proteins, 12 proteins were significantly down-regulated and 6 proteins were up-regulated. Interestingly, it was observed that ALA-induced the up-regulation of dihydrolipoyl dehydrogenase, light harvesting complex photo-system II subunit 6 and 30S ribosomal proteins in the presence of Cd2+ stress. In addition, it was also observed that ALA-induced the down-regulation in thioredoxin-like protein, 2, 3-bisphosphoglycerate, proteasome and thiamine thiazole synthase proteins under Cd2+ stress. Taken together, the present study sheds light on molecular mechanisms involved in ALA-induced Cd2+ tolerance in B. napus leaves and suggests a more active involvement of ALA in plant physiological processes than previously proposed.

Atrazine is a synthetic herbicide applied to control broadleaf weeds in different crops. In many parts of the world, atrazine is mainly applied for controlling weeds in maize fields. However, studies on the possible adverse effects of atrazine on maize crop can hardly be found in literature. The present study was therefore conducted to evaluate the effect of atrazine on different characteristics of maize seedlings including germination, growth, chlorophyll contents, soluble sugars, proteins and proline levels, ions accumulation, cell viability, and cell injury. In addition, the effects of atrazine on reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation and antioxidant enzymes activities in maize seedlings were estimated. It was found that at high concentration, atrazine slightly but significantly inhibited seed germination and growth of maize seedlings. Light-harvesting pigments (chlorophylls a and b , and total carotenoids) exhibited a higher sensitivity to atrazine and were negatively impacted by atrazine at doses above 50 ppm. Atrazine caused an increase in soluble sugars at all tested doses and decrease in soluble proteins at the highest tested dose. Exposure of maize seedlings to atrazine resulted in an increased cell injury and decreased cell viability. Atrazine did not affect the concentration of Na + , K + , and Ca 2+ ions in maize seedlings to any greater extent; however, some minor changes were observed in some cases. An increase in the stress marker, proline, was found upon exposure to atrazine. The observed effects of atrazine in maize seedlings can be attributed to oxidative stress as revealed by an increase in H 2 O 2 content and higher activities of peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT) enzymes in atrazine-treated seedlings. The present investigation concludes that atrazine has the potential to adversely affect germination and growth of maize seedlings by inducing oxidative stress that causes increased cell injury and decreased cell viability as well as impairs the concentration of light-harvesting pigments.

Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) play versatile functions in multiple aspects of plant growth and development. A comprehensive genome-wide survey of this gene family in the genomes of G. raimondii and G. arboreum was carried out in this study. Based on phylogenetic analyses, the GST gene family of both two diploid cotton species could be divided into eight classes, and approximately all the GST genes within the same subfamily shared similar gene structure. Additionally, the gene structures between the orthologs were highly conserved. The chromosomal localization analyses revealed that GST genes were unevenly distributed across the genome in both G. raimondii and G. arboreum. Tandem duplication could be the major driver for the expansion of GST gene families. Meanwhile, the expression analysis for the selected 40 GST genes showed that they exhibited tissue-specific expression patterns and their expression were induced or repressed by salt stress. Those findings shed lights on the function and evolution of the GST gene family in Gossypium species.

Heavy metal pollution is one of the major constraints in oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) production. In this study, protective role of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) on plant growth under lead (Pb) stress was studied in B. napus. Plants were grown hydroponically in greenhouse conditions under three levels (0, 100, and 400 μM) of Pb and three levels (0, 100 and 200 μM) of H₂S donor sodium hydrosulfide. Outcomes demonstrated that Pb stress significantly reduced the plant biomass, leaf chlorophyll contents, nutrients uptake in the leaves and roots of B. napus plants. Exogenous application of H₂S significantly improved the plant biomass, chlorophyll contents and concentration of macro- and micronutrients in the leaves and roots of B. napus plants under Pb-toxicity conditions. The data indicated that application of Pb alone significantly increased the reactive oxygen species (ROS) as well as malondialdehyde (MDA) in the leaves and roots of plants. Meanwhile, application of H₂S decreased the production of MDA and ROS in the leaves and roots by increasing antioxidant activities under Pb stress. Moreover, this study also revealed that plants treated with H₂S at different concentrations enhanced the contents of total glutathione and glutathione reduced/glutathione oxidized ratio in leaves and roots under different levels of Pb. The results depicted that H₂S improved the plant biomass, uptake of nutrients in the leaves and roots of B. napus plants and enhanced the performance of antioxidant defense system due to its ameliorative potential under Pb stress conditions.

Due to alarming increase in population and rapid industrialization, drinking water quality is being deteriorated day by day in Pakistan. This review sums up the outcomes of various research studies conducted for drinking water quality status of different areas of Pakistan by taking into account the physicochemical properties of drinking water as well as the presence of various pathogenic microorganisms. About 20% of the whole population of Pakistan has access to safe drinking water. The remaining 80% of population is forced to use unsafe drinking water due to the scarcity of safe and healthy drinking water sources. The primary source of contamination is sewerage (fecal) which is extensively discharged into drinking water system supplies. Secondary source of pollution is the disposal of toxic chemicals from industrial effluents, pesticides, and fertilizers from agriculture sources into the water bodies. Anthropogenic activities cause waterborne diseases that constitute about 80% of all diseases and are responsible for 33% of deaths. This review highlights the drinking water quality, contamination sources, sanitation situation, and effects of unsafe drinking water on humans. There is immediate need to take protective measures and treatment technologies to overcome unhygienic condition of drinking water supplies in different areas of Pakistan.

The upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor has been recognized as an important wastewater treatment technology among anaerobic treatment methods. The objective of this study was to perform literature review on the treatment of domestic sewage using the UASB reactor as the core component and identifying future areas of research. The merits of anaerobic and aerobic bioreactors are highlighted and other sewage treatment technologies are compared with UASB on the basis of performance, resource recovery potential, and cost. The comparison supports UASB as a suitable option on the basis of performance, green energy generation, minimal space requirement, and low capital, operation, and maintenance costs. The main process parameters such as temperature, hydraulic retention time (HRT), organic loading rate (OLR), pH, granulation, and mixing and their effects on the performance of UASB reactor and hydrogen production are presented for achieving optimal results. Feasible posttreatment steps are also identified for effective discharge and/or reuse of treated water.

Phytoextraction of zinc, copper, lead, iron, and nickel from landfill leachate by duckweed (L. minor) was investigated every 3 days over a period of 2 weeks. Bioconcentration factor and removal efficiency were also calculated. Results of this study proved that L. minor significantly reduced the concentration of heavy metals in landfill leachate. Removal efficiency of L. minor, for all the metals, from landfill leachate was more than 70% with the maximum value for copper (91%). Reduction in chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) was observed by 39% and 47%, respectively. However, other physiochemical parameters like pH, total suspended solids, (TSS) and total dissolved solids (TDS) were reduced by 13%, 33%, and 41%, respectively. The value of bioconcentration factor (BCF) was less than 1 with the maximum figure for copper (0.84) and lead (0.81), showing that the plant is a moderate accumulator for these heavy metals. Duckweed (L. minor) appeared as a sustainable alternative candidate and is recommended for the treatment of landfill leachate waste water contaminants.

Purpose Gut microbiome dysbiosis is a critical determinant for autologous fecal microbiota transplantation (Auto-FMT) eligibility, yet current classification approaches rely predominantly on supervised learning with manually annotated sequencing labels, which are often scarce. This study proposes DynaBiome, a framework designed to predict gut dysbiosis by leveraging unsupervised learning and clinical phenotypic proxies as a scalable alternative to ground-truth genomic labeling. Methods Our framework employs an LSTM autoencoder architecture to capture temporal microbiome dynamics within 14-day windows. The model reconstructs normal microbiome patterns, where high reconstruction errors signal potential dysbiosis. To ensure rigorous evaluation and prevent data leakage, the dataset was partitioned via a strict patient-level split. Unsupervised anomaly signals were refined via phenotypic proxy labels (e.g., fever, neutropenia) via weak supervision, and ensemble learning methods were applied to optimize classification performance. Results The initial LSTM autoencoder successfully flagged dysbiotic sequences but required refinement to reduce false positives. Ensemble learning significantly enhanced predictive accuracy. The stacked ensemble (with Logistic Regression meta-learner) demonstrated optimal performance with an ROC AUC of 0.8908 and a Weighted F1-score of 0.7909. This approach significantly outperformed the standard One-Class SVM baseline (ROC AUC 0.6033), confirming the superiority of deep temporal modeling over static anomaly detection. Critically, the model achieved performance levels comparable to fully supervised baselines, confirming the efficacy of the proxy-label framework. Conclusion Integrating unsupervised temporal feature extraction with stacked ensemble methods provides a viable framework for dysbiosis prediction. These results demonstrate that leveraging phenotypic via weak supervision can effectively approximate supervised baselines, thereby reducing the reliance on comprehensive metagenomic annotations for longitudinal patient monitoring.

Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). Engagement in daily occupations and day to day activities helps to restore function in individuals with injured hands and provides a platform to practise selected occupations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a combination of Occupation Based Intervention (OBI) and Therapeutic Exercise (TE) compared to TE alone for the rehabilitation of hand injuries. A single center RCT, parallel group was conducted at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital (KLGH), Malaysia. Forty-six adult clients with hand injuries who consented to participate were randomly allocated to either the OBI + TE group or to the TE group. Following a ten week intervention program, statistical significance differences were found in DASH score (TE = 18.64 ± 14.84 vs OBI + TE = 9.50 ± 9.14, p = 0.02); total active motion (TE = 1035.85 ± 179.84 vs OBI + TE = 1203.65 ± 133.60, p = 0.01); neuropathic pain (TE = 2.90 ± 2.79 vs OBI + TE = 1.05 ± 2.01, p = 0.02); COPM performance (TE = 7.62 ± 2.03 vs OBI + TE = 9.53 ± 0.64, p < 0.001); and COPM satisfaction (TE = 7.60 ± 2.11 vs OBI + TE = 9.49 ± 0.76, p < 0.001) in favor of OBI + TE group. This study highlighted the integration of OBI into hand injury rehabilitation improved outcomes for clients. 1b.

Cadmium (Cd) pollution is present in the world over especially in the industrialized parts of the world. To reduce Cd accumulation in various crops especially food crops, alleviating agents such as reduced glutathione (GSH) can be applied, which are capable either to exclude or to sequester Cd contamination. This study investigated the leaf-based spatial distribution of physiological, metabolic, and microstructural changes in two cotton cultivars (Coker 312 and TM-1) under GSH-mediated Cd stress using single levels of Cd (50 μM) and GSH (50 μM) both separately and in mix along with control. Results showed that GSH revived the morphology and physiology of both cotton cultivars alone or in mix with Cd. Cd uptake was enhanced in all segments of leaf and whole leaf upon the addition of GSH. GSH alleviated Cd-induced reduction in the photosynthetic pigment compositions and chlorophyll a fluorescence parameters. Mean data of biomarkers (2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium (TTC), total soluble protein (TSP), malondialdehyde (MDA), hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 )) revealed the adverse effects of Cd stress on leaf segments of both cultivars, which were revived by GSH. The oxidative metabolism induced by Cd stress was profoundly influenced by exogenous GSH application. The microstructural alterations were mainly confined to chloroplastic regions of leaves under Cd-stressed conditions, which were greatly revived upon the GSH addition. As a whole, Cd stress greatly affected TM-1 as compared to Coker 312. These results suggest a positive role of GSH in alleviating Cd-mediated changes in different leaf sections of cotton cultivars.