Earticle

Here we report on the development of an Integrated Bioinformatics Toolkit (InBit) that is application-based software, integrating various bioinformatics programs for general purpose biological data analysis like gene prediction, gene analysis, protein analysis, sequence alignment, etc. InBit will enable the biologists to use the various programs for their research purpose without being bothered with their various technical aspects. It will also help graduate students and those who are newly using bioinformatics tools. Though the individual software that is integrated in InBit are available on the web and are quite user-friendly, they often become difficult to use when the size of the data set becomes quite large. In these cases, it becomes necessary to use standalone versions of many of this software, but this requires some prior knowledge of UNIX operating system. InBit merges the standalone properties of the software in a user-friendly menu-driven environment. It is open-ended UNIX/LINUX based software that can be extended by the user if so desired. Its hardware requirements are also very basic, requiring a optimum of 1GB RAM for efficient performance.

Leather processing involves many sequential steps form raw hide to the processed leather. All these steps define the quality of leather in order to perform in the prescribed conditions. Dehairing of raw hide is one of the most important steps which define removal of hair, fat and other unnecessary things form raw hide. The most convenient way to achieve perfect dehairing is use of enzyme and specifically protease which dissolve the hair protein without affecting structure of skin. In this process generally alkaline and neutral proteases have been used extensively since last two decades. Though the conventional protease are efficient for dehairing of raw hide but the stability of these protease in various temperatures and chemical environments hamper their activity. In many instances the process will run for long duration which again reduces the activity of enzymes. Thermostable proteases form microbial sources are the better option to render the problem of stability of conventional protease in the different temperatures and chemical environments. Many of bacterial strains naturally adapted their habitat in higher temperature and the enzymes of such bacterial strains are very stable. Many of thermostable proteases have been isolated, purified and implemented in various industrial processes which have been limited due to stability complication of conventional protease. Here in this article we have summarized the potential role of thermostable proteases in leather industry and more specifically in dehairing of raw hide.

Both phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium are speciation theory and are valid models for understanding macroevolution. Both theories describe the rates of speciation. For Gradualism, changes in species is slow and gradual, occurring in small periodic changes in the gene pool, whereas for Punctuated Equilibrium, evolution occurs in spurts of relatively rapid change with long periods of non-change. The gradualism model depicts evolution as a slow steady process in which organisms change and develop slowly over time. In contrast, the punctuated equilibrium model depicts evolution as long periods of no evolutionary change followed by rapid periods of change. Both are models for describing successive evolutionary changes due to the mechanisms of evolution in a time frame.

Silk degumming process is a fundamental finishing process for silk yarn and silk fabric. The objective of degumming is remove the substrate such as silk gum (sericin), wax and some impurities from silk fibres. The principle of degumming process is breaking the peptide linkage of amino acid in sericin structure into a small molecule, which is soluble in water. The methods used for the degumming are the hydrolysis reaction performed by acid and alkaline, but these methods are not eco-friendly and same time they have a big problem on the surface area of silk. Hence the proteolytic enzyme have been used to solve this problem and shown promising results not only in the production level but also quality of silk. Since protease based degumming is eco-friendly which will be an additional advantage. Though the conventional protease are quite efficient for degumming but having some disadvantage like thermal and chemical stability which is one drawback has to solved, also alkaline protease can hamper the quality and physical appearance of silk as silk is quite sensitive to alkali and alkaline protease. The thermostable protease basically forms Geobacillus genus has been used for the enzymatic degumming of silk which are quite resistant to various chemicals and temperature. In this article we have summarized comparative analysis of detergent, conventional protease and thermostable protease for efficient degumming.

Over the past decade, the rapid development of high-throughput technologies has lead to an explosive growth in biological information. Many molecular biology fields involve in-silico experiments using bioinformatics applications. A workflow can be well-defined model for bioinformatics analysis processes to be performed as a chain of interlinked data process tasks. We have developed a client/server-based workflow system called Bioworks, supporting large-scale analysis through the high performance cluster computing resources. In this paper, we highlight implementation methods in Bioworks, for meeting key requirements of effective workflow systems for bioinformatics analysis processes.

The purpose of this study was to assess 5 different types of fundamental movements with X-slider and inline skate, through an examination of muscle activity patterns and kinematics. Visol DV Express program was used to capture the data, Kwon 3D 3.1 for windows was used to quantify the kinematical variables. 1) Straight motion exercise: rectus femoris, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius were active with the X-slider at the pushing leg phase. At the pulling leg phase, levels of hamstring and gastrocnemius activities increased. Inline skate used tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius as agonist muscles instead of quadricep groups. 2) Figure-8 exercise: X-slider produced high level of rectus femoris, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius activities. 3) Slalom exercise: X-slider activated many kinks of lower leg muscles especially crossing legs motion produced high adductor muscle activity. Tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius were mainly used for inline skate. 4) Rotation exercise: X-slider used most of lower leg muscles as if performing slalom. Gathering the legs together led to greater adductor muscles activity. Adductor muscle, tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius were used as agonist for inline skate. 5) While stopping: rectus femoris was highly used with X-slider and tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius were largely used with Inline skate.