Department of Bioscience & Bioengineering

&ldquo;IIT Jodhpur is committed to impart quality education to facilitate the creation of qualified, competent and responsible human resources to meet the emerging technological challenges of the world. It is working towards creating an equitable learning platform that is positive, accessible and effective in the face of the modern societal and scientific advancements.

Flexibility in curriculum, in all its academic programs, encompassing elements of teaching, research, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is the most unique feature of IIT Jodhpur. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the National Mission on Cyber Physical Systems, has identified IIT Jodhpur as a Technology &amp; Innovation Hub in the area of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. The institute has also been nominated as the coordinator for the Jodhpur City and Knowledge Cluster by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India.

The sprawling 852-acre IIT Jodhpur campus is a majestic tribute to the deep-rooted diverse cultural heritage of the region. The campus is an architectural masterpiece, which is slated to become an international exemplar of sustainability with net-zero energy, and advanced water and waste management strategies.&rdquo;

IIT Jodhpur

World University root node

Cancer Research 76 (14 Supplement)

Slit2 inhibits breast cancer growth and metastasis by modulating tumor microenvironment

Oncoscience

RAGE: A novel target for breast cancer growth and metastasis

The current study describes the in-depth characterization of agar–gelatin based co-hydrogels, emulgels and bigels to have an insight about the differences in the properties of the formulations. Hydrogels have been extensively studied as vehicle for controlled drug release, whereas, the concept of emulgels and bigels is relatively new. The formulations were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, FTIR spectroscopy, XRD and mechanical properties. The biocompatibility and the ability of the formulations to be used as drug delivery vehicle were also studied. The scanning electron micrographs suggested the presence of internal phases within the agar–gelatin composite matrices of co-hydrogel, emulgel and bigel. FTIR and XRD studies suggested higher crystallinity of emulgels and bigels. Electrical impedance and mechanical stability of the emulgel and the bigel was higher than the hydrogel. The prepared formulations were found to be biocompatible and suitable for drug delivery applications. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine

Characterization of gelatin–agar based phase separated hydrogel, emulgel and bigel: a comparative study

Bigels of sunflower oil, span 40 and water soluble synthetic polymers (e.g. polyvinyl alcohol and polyvinyl pyrrolidone) were prepared and explored as controlled delivery vehicle for metronidazole. Fluorescence microscope was used to analyze the microstructure of the bigels. Viscometer and mechanical tester were used to study the mechanical properties of the bigels. The antimicrobial efficiency of the metronidazole loaded bigels was evaluated in vitro using Escherichia coli. The cytotoxicity studies were conducted in vitro using HaCaT cell lines. The microstructure of the bigels showed the presence of hydrogel as continuous phase and oleogels as dispersed form. The bigels were viscoelastic in nature with pseudoplastic flow behavior. A decrease in the amount of the released drug was observed with the increase in the polymer concentration in the bigels. All the bigels showed a high cell proliferation index. The drug loaded bigels showed equivalent inhibitory zones against Escherichia coli as compared to commercially available formulations. © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

European Polymer Journal

Physical and mechanical properties of sunflower oil and synthetic polymers based bigels for the delivery of nitroimidazole antibiotic - A therapeutic approach for controlled drug delivery

In this study, novel organogel based lyotropic liquid crystals (LLC) were prepared and investigated as controlled release matrices. The LLC gels were prepared using mixtures of Span 80-Tween 80 (1:2 w/w), aqueous solution of polyvinyl alcohol (10% w/w) and sesame oil. The prepared gels were characterized by microscopy, mechanical testing and thermal studies. The biocompatibility of the gels was tested against human keratinocytes. Metronidazole loaded gels were used for in vitro drug release and antimicrobial tests. The formation of water-in-oil emulsion gels was confirmed by fluorescent microscopy. Polarized micrographs showed the formation of lamellar structures within the aqueous phase of the matrices. Mechanical studies confirmed the viscoelastic nature of the gels with solid like consistency. The melting points of the gels were in the range of 44-51°C. The gels did not elicit any cytotoxic effect on the human keratinocytes. The release of metronidazole from the gels was diffusion mediated. The drug loaded gels showed good antimicrobial efficacy against Escherichia coli. ©2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Novel organogel based lyotropic liquid crystal physical gels for controlled delivery applications

Several studies have demonstrated the role of climatic factors in shaping skin phenotypes, particularly pigmentation. Keratinization is another well-designed feature of human skin, which is involved in modulating transepidermal water loss (TEWL). Although this physiological process is closely linked to climate, presently it is not clear whether genetic diversity is observed in keratinization and whether this process also responds to the environmental pressure. To address this, we adopted a multipronged approach, which involved analysis of 1) copy number variations in diverse Indian and HapMap populations from varied geographical regions; 2) genetic association with geoclimatic parameters in 61 populations of dbCLINE database in a set of 549 genes from four processes namely keratinization, pigmentation, epidermal differentiation, and housekeeping functions; 3) sequence divergence in 4,316 orthologous promoters and corresponding exonic regions of human and chimpanzee with macaque as outgroup, and 4) protein sequence divergence (Ka/Ks) across nine vertebrate classes, which differ in their extent of TEWL. Our analyses demonstrate that keratinization and epidermal differentiation genes are under accelerated evolution in the human lineage, relative to pigmentation and housekeeping genes. We show that this entire pathway may have been driven by environmental selection pressure through concordant functional polymorphisms across several genes involved in skin keratinization. Remarkably, this underappreciated function of skin may be a crucial determinant of adaptation to diverse environmental pressures across world populations. © Crown copyright 2014.

Fulltext

Molecular Biology and Evolution

Population diversity and adaptive evolution in Keratinization genes: Impact of environment in shaping skin phenotypes

Brains of adult monkeys with chronic lesions of dorsal columns of spinal cord at cervical levels undergo large-scale reorganization. Reorganization results in expansion of intact chin inputs, which reactivate neurons in the deafferented hand representation in the primary somatosensory cortex (area 3b), ventroposterior nucleus of the thalamus and cuneate nucleus of the brainstem. A likely contributing mechanism for this large-scale plasticity is sprouting of axons across the hand–face border. Here we determined whether such sprouting takes place in area 3b. We first determined the extent of intrinsic corticocortical connectivity between the hand and the face representations in normal area 3b. Small amounts of neuroanatomical tracers were injected in these representations close to the electrophysiologically determined hand–face border. Locations of the labeled neurons were mapped with respect to the detailed electrophysiological somatotopicmapsand histologically determined hand–face border revealed in sections of the flattened cortex stained for myelin. Results show that intracortical projections across the hand–face border are few. In monkeys with chronic unilateral lesions of the dorsal columns and expanded chin representation, connections across the hand–face border were not different compared with normal monkeys. Thalamocortical connections from the hand and face representations in the ventroposterior nucleus to area 3b also remained unaltered after injury. The results show that sprouting of intrinsic connections in area 3b or the thalamocortical inputs does not contribute to large-scale cortical plasticity. © 2015 the authors.

Journal of Neuroscience

Intracortical and thalamocortical connections of the hand and face representations in somatosensory area 3b of macaque monkeys and effects of chronic spinal cord injuries

A subset L subset of V of a graph G = (V, E) is called a liar's dominating set of G if (i) vertical bar N-G{[}u] boolean AND L vertical bar >= 2 for every vertex u is an element of V, and (ii) vertical bar N-G {[}u] boolean OR N-G{[}v]) boolean AND L vertical bar >= 3 for every pair of distinct vertices u, v is an element of V. The MIN LIAR Dom SET problem is to find a liar's dominating set of minimum cardinality of a given graph G and the DECIDE LIAR Dom SET problem is the decision version of the MIN LIAR Dom SET problem. The DECIDE LIAR DOM SET problem is known to be NP-complete for general graphs. In this paper, we first present approximation algorithms and hardness of approximation results of the MIN LIAR Dom SET problem in general graphs, bounded degree graphs, and p-claw free graphs. We then show that the DECIDE LIAR Dom SET problem is NP-complete for doubly chordal graphs and propose a linear time algorithm for computing a minimum liar's dominating set in block graphs. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE

Hardness results, approximation and exact algorithms for liar's domination problem in graphs

The microRNAs are small, endogenous non-coding RNAs found in plants, animals, and some viruses, which function in RNA silencing and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. It is suggested by various genome-wide studies that a substantial fraction of miRNA genes is likely to form clusters. The coherent expression of the miRNA clusters can then be used to classify samples according to the clinical outcome. In this regard, a new clustering algorithm, termed as rough hypercuboid based supervised attribute clustering (RH-SAC), is proposed to find such groups of miRNAs. The proposed algorithm is based on the theory of rough set, which directly incorporates the information of sample categories into the miRNA clustering process, generating a supervised clustering algorithm for miRNAs. The effectiveness of the new approach is demonstrated on several publicly available miRNA expression data sets using support vector machine. The so-called B.632+ bootstrap error estimate is used to minimize the variability and biasedness of the derived results. The association of the miRNA clusters to various biological pathways is also shown by doing pathway enrichment analysis. © The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Molecular BioSystems

Rough hypercuboid based supervised clustering of miRNAs

Gene–environment (G × E) interactions have been invoked to account, at least in part, for the gap between the known heritability of common human diseases and the phenotypic variation hitherto explained by genetic variants. Noteworthy in this context, a case-only (CO) design has been proposed in the past as a means to detect G × E interactions possibly more efficiently than by using classical case–control and cohort designs. So far, however, most CO studies have followed a candidate (or single) gene approach, and the genome-wide utility of the CO design is still more or less unknown. In particular, the way in which linkage disequilibrium (LD) impacts upon the chance to detect G × E interaction through the analysis of proxy markers has not been studied in much detail before. Therefore, we systematically assessed the power to indirectly detect a given G × E interaction through exploiting LD in a CO design. Our simulations revealed a strong relationship between LD and detection power that was subsequently validated in a real colorectal cancer data set. © 2014, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.