eChapters

Introduction 
Plant disease has been highly impacted by the development of new technology. The degree of the impact depends on how much the technology affects the component steps of the system. Many of the steps in plant disease diagnosis and management depend heavily on accurate and timely information and so can greatly benefit from the development of improved methods of accessing and disseminating information. Computers provide a wide range of tools which are extensively used in plant disease diagnosis and management. In fact, they will be a key to improve farm practices in the coming decades as it is scientifically pertinent to organize farm information in spatial databases because agricultural systems are inherently spatial. Biological and physical aspects of agricultural system create spatial heterogeneity, and as a result, patchiness is the rule in the occurrence and distribution of plant pathogens and disease (Campbell and Madden, 1990). In the area of plant diseases computers are useful

Biotechnology in the food processing sector targets the selection and improvement of microorganisms, including bacteria, yeasts and moulds with the objectives of improving process control, yields and efficiency as well as the quality, safety and consistency of bioprocessed products. They perform a series of processes such as fermentation, hydrolysis, etc. and even spoilage of food, depending upon the species of organisms, nature of raw material (food), environmental factors (temperature, pH, salt concentration, etc.), duration, etc.

Fermentation
Is the process of bioconversion of organic substances by microorganisms and/or enzymes (complex proteins) of microbial, plant or animal origin. It is one of the oldest forms of food preservation which is applied globally.

In recent years, a new branch of biological science, called as bio-informatics receives more attention among its users and calls for application of computational statistical algorithms to a greater extent and needs employment of more sophisticated mathematical/statistical tools. Though biological science and information technology forms a major part in bio-informatics research as applied to agriculture, statistical tools act as their backbone. Its utility is more felt starting from the stage of framing of hypothesis till analyzing/interpreting results of a scientific experiment.  It can also be viewed as a three way multi-disciplinary approach with biotechnology, information technology and statistical technology as its three faces, with the principles of statistics applied to biological science through an interface information technology.

Natural Gene Flow in Plants

More than 70% of plant species, for example potato, oat, rape-seed, wheat, and kiwifruit have come from spontaneous interspecific or intergeneric hybridization although the extent of natural hybridization differs among the plant genera and families. It creates genetic variation and produce recombinant genotypes that may exhibit heterosis.The stabilization of these hybrids often through polyploidy (autopolyploidy or allopolyploidy) can result in the formation of new biological species (Masterson, 1994), thereby, having impact on both ecological and evolutionary processes (Martinsen et al., 2001). In addition, species genomes are often differentially permeable to introgression if they are under simple genetic control (unlike many genes contribute to hybrid fitness with linkages) and certain portion of the genome can readily incorporate alien alleles. Introgression is a selective process of gene flow that filters deleterious genes and takes only beneficial genes (incorporating the alleles from one taxon into other).

A gene microarray is a (mxn) matrix, containing n-experimental conditions, also called attributes for m-genes. Gene clustering refers to partitioning a microarray of genes based on the commonality of attributes. Genes belonging to a cluster often do not coexpress or coregulate. This calls for biclustering that segregates the (mxn) matrix into small windows. In other words biclustering refers to simultaneous clustering of rows and columns of the microarray. This chapter reviews some of the well known biclustering algorithms, and proposes an alternative solution to the problem using evolutionary multi-objective optimization technique.

Introduction

Clustering is process to automatically partition a set of p-dimensional data points (p³1) into classes, where the data in each class have similarity with respect to a given distance metric. Each class usually has an ideal member that possesses the necessary characteristics of the class.

1.     Determination of lmax
    
2.     Verification of Beer-Lambert Law
    
3.     Estimation of Carbohydrate by Anthrone Method
    
4.     Estimation of Reducing Sugar by Di Nitro Salicylic (DNS) Acid
    
5.     Estimation of Protein by Biuret Method
    
6.     Estimation of Protein by Lowry’s Method
    
7.     Estimation of Protein by Bradford Method
    
8.     Estimation of Cholesterol
    
9.     Estimation of DNA
    
10.     Estimation of RNA
    
11.     Determination of iso Electric Point of Amino Acid

1.     Common Solvents
    
2.     Common Buffer Compositions

1.     Chromatography
    
2.     Identification of Sugar in Fruit Juice by Thin Layer Chromatography
    
3.     SDS-PAGE
    
4.     Composition for Native PAGE
    
5.     Silver Staining of Protein Gels

Introduction

Saffron is a naturally derived plant product from the dried stigma of the Crocus sativus flower  (Gresta et al., 2009).The saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is an Iridaceae family member, herbal perennial, sterile (2n=3x=24) geophyte, traditionally propagated by vegetative corms. Its cultivation dates back to late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean region (Negbi, 1999) in Anatolia since the ancient times (Arslan et al., 2007) and for at least 3500 years in Egypt and Middle East. Saffron contains more than 150 volatile and aroma yielding compounds. The chemical components mainly include carotenoids, crocin, picrocrocin, safranal etc (Abdullaev, 1993, Tarantalis et al., 1995, Karaoglu 
et al., 2007). Saffron is mostly used as spice, food colorant, dye or perfume. The dried stigmas introduce unique color, taste and fragrance and thus making it the world’s most expensive spice (Baghlian et al., 2010). Saffron has been used in folklore herbal medicines for centuries (Basker and Negbi, 1983).

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has been introducing numerous hazardous compounds into the environment at an exponential rate.  Environmental pollutants have become a major global concern. The modern growth of industrialization, urbanization, modern agricultural development, energy generation, have resulted in indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources for fulfilling the human desires and need, which have contributed in disturbing the ecological balance on which the quality of our environment depends.
 
Technological revolution has brought new changes in products and processes in industry. The waste generated from the development of products and processes are of concern to the environmental list. A variety of pollutants such as heavy metals, xenobiotics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), chlorinated and nitro-aromatic compounds are found to be highly toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic for living organisms (Zhang and Bennett. 2005; Samanta et al., 2002).

Reproductive Biotechnology
    
Artificial Insemination (AI)
    
History and Future Perspectives of Artificial Insemination
    
Semen Cryopreservation
    
Buffalo
    
Goat
    
Cryoprotection and Anti Oxidants
    
Cryopreservation and Genetic Stability of Livestock Spermatozoa
    
Insemination Technique
    
Cattle and Buffalo
    
Sheep and Goat
    
Conception Rate with Artificial Insemination
    
Multiple Ovulation and Embryo Transfer (MOET)
    
Advantages of Embryo Transfer
    
MOET Includes the Following Steps
    
Superovulatory Treatments
    
Insemination
    
Recovery of Embryos
    
Synchronization of Recipients
    
Cattle
    
Buffaloes
    
Goats
    
Horses
    
In vitro Maturation, fertilization and culture of Oocytes
    
Historical Development
    
In Vitro Maturation of Oocytes
    
In vitro Sperm Capacitation
    
Scope
    
Limitations
    
Embryo Cryopreservation
    
Ultrasonography in Reproductive Management
    
Ultrasound-guided Transvaginal Oocyte Pick-up (OPU)
    
Embryo Cloning or Nuclear Transfer
    
Blastomere Separation
    
Embryo Splitting
    
Nuclear Transfer Cloning (NT)
    
Embryonic Stem Cell Complementations
    
Limitations and Future Prospects of Cloning
    
Sexing of Embryos and Separation of X and Y Chromosomes Bearing Sperms
    
PCR  in Sex Determination
    
Transgenic Animal Production
    
Gene Transfer Through Direct DNA Microinjection
    
Gene Transfer with Retroviral-Vector Assistance
    
Gene Transfer through Production of Germ-line Chimeras
    
Parthenogenetic Embryos: An Emerging Tool in Reproductive Biotechnology for Multiplication of Superior Germ Plasm
    
Applications of Parthenogenesis
    
Livestock Genomics and Marker Assisted Selection (Use of DNA Level Markers)
    
Stem Cells
    
Vaccine for Fertility Control and Increase Prolificacy
    
Auto-immunization to Increase Prolificacy
    
Biotechnology of Conservation of Livestock Breed Biodiversity
    
Gene for Prolificity: Booroola Merino
    
Role of Biotechnology in Enhancing Production
    
Milk
    
Biotechnology of Rumen Manipulation
    
Genetically Modified Ruminal Microorganisms

Biotechnology of Animal Feeding
    
Probiotics
    
Biotechnology Crops as Animal Feed
    
Biotechnology of Animal Products
    
Some New Products made Possible by Biotechnology Include

Animal Science Biotechnology Research Centres
    
Current Status and Some of the Achievements in Animal Heatlh
    
National Bioresource Development Board
    
Animal Biotechnology
    
Biotechnology Parks and Incubators
    
National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi
    
Bose Institute, Kolkata
    
Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi
    
National Centre For Cell Science, Pune
    
Centre for Dna Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (Cdfd) Hyderabad
    
National Institute for Plant Genome Research (Nipgr) New Delhi
    
Institute of Bioresources and Sustainable Development,Imphal
    
Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneshwar
    
Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation Limited
    
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnolgoy (Icgeb), New Delhi
    
Animal Biotechnology Research Abroad

Acetic acid            
    

Molecular weight    60.05        
    Melting point (^ºC)    17        
    Boiling point (^ºC)    118        
    Flash point (^ºC)    40        
    Auto-ignition point (^ºC)    426        
    Specific gravity at 20^ºC    1.05        
    Molarity of the concentrated acid (M)    17.4    
    1 M solution    57.5 ml concentrated acid per litre

Chromosome number and nuclear DNA amount are important biodiversity characters together provide a very powerful method for determining evolutionary relationships. Furthermore provide an estimate of relatedness between species that in turn suggest reasons underlying the success or failure of crosses, even for interploidy hybridization. It is expected that species that are cytogenetically most similar will be easiest to hybridize and produce viable interspecific offspring (Thomas, 1993). Hence, it is important to study karyotypes and other characters of the genome of the species involved in a breeding programme.

According to Jackson (1971) and Stebbins (1950) the karyotype is the phenotypic appearance of the somatic chromosomes in contrast to their genic content.

Abstract
Proteins are comprised of domains, folds and motifs, which form its basic building blocks. Most efforts to understand protein evolution and its function have focused on domains as these can fold into a stable three-dimensional structure independent of the rest of the protein chain and generally perform a unique function conserved over the evolution. Genetic recombinant techniques allow reorganization of domains, called domain shuffling, resulting in different combinations of domains in different proteins. This along with swapping and insertion of domains results in complex architectures and are responsible for new protein functions in evolution. Protein domains are very useful in analyzing the mechanisms of protein folding and their stability and structural transformations in various conditions. This can be done reliably if a multi-domain target is considered only in terms of its constituent domains. The underlying goal is to reduce a complex protein structure to a set of simpler yet structurally meaningful units, each of which can be analyzed independently.

Introduction

Natural evolution gifted the biological world a treasure of diverse bio-molecules that take part in various cellular activities. Proteins, one of the vital molecules of biological function are wisely folded polymers comprising 20 different aminoacids. Function of each protein is encoded in its aminoacid sequence. Aminoacid residues can indulge in bonded or non-bonded interactions depending on the environment. These inter residue interactions with in a polypeptide drive its folding in to a compact conformation from a linear molecule. Biochemical properties as well as the linear arrangement of the aminoacids determines the three dimensional structure of a protein. These determinants of defined structure directly or indirectly dictates functional fate of the folded protein also.

Abstract

Biological Pathways represent system level sophistication of organisms. An exclusive peek into the extent of sophistication of an organism may provide proof of its past evolutionary struggle and position in the developmental trend from pathway point of view. This knowledge may not align with the traditional universally acknowledged standard 16s rRNA trend. Analyzing the reasons behind such discrepancy can constitute an important research work. To map sophistication of one organism with respect to other organisms, phylogeny is required. Here, we are mapping the level of sophistication in terms of enzymes among a set of TCA cycles belonging to different species, arbitrarily chosen from the KEGG/PATHWAY database. For this purpose, we converted the metabolic pathway information into simplified enzyme-enzyme relational (E-E-R) graphs. Similarity scores obtained from inter-genus, intra-genus as well as inter-species comparison of these graphs are used for phylogenetic tree construction. These phylogenetic trees throw light on the trend of development of metabolic pathways among different species. But peculiarly, these trees have less similarity with the conventional evolutionary phylogenetic trees constructed from NCBI taxonomy data. In this paper, we have tried to find some justifications for this dissimilarity among phylogenetic trees, by considering their habitats.

Abstract
Combined advancement in computer sciences and hardware with uniformly significant developments in molecular biology and chemistry are providing toxicology with a powerful new tool box. This tool box of computational models promises to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness by which the hazards and risks of environmental chemicals are determined. Computational toxicology focuses on applying these tools across many scales, including vastly increasing the numbers of chemicals and the types of biological interactions that can be evaluated. Apart from that, knowledge of toxicity pathways gathered within the tool box will be directly applicable to the study of the biological responses across a range of dose levels, including those more likely to be representative of exposures to the human population.  Although inappropriate pharmacokinetic properties are a major cause of abrasion in the safety issues are recognized as today’s single largest cause of drug candidate failure. It is expected that the right balance of in vivo, in vitro and computational toxicology predictions applied as early as possible in the discovery process will help to reduce the number of safety issues.

Modern research on life science is progressing at the nanoscale not only with the objective to reduce time and cost but also to ease the handling and working conditions. Application of nanotechnology in various domains of science has led to the enormous innovations. This field facilitates better understanding as well as treatment of living system, activate biotechnological processes, synthesizing new drugs for targeted delivery and biocompatible materials for sustainable environment. Throughout the world nano science is getting wide propaganda. Its application to medicine is increasing rapidly in order to develop nano-drugs with prolonged availability and efficient delivery through rearrangement of molecules at the nanoscale using molecular interactions for example van der Waals forces, H bonds, electrostatic dipoles and various surface forces.

Introduction

The branch of science that deals with resolving the evolutionary relationships among organisms is phylogenetics. Phylogeny is the description of biological relationships, usually expressed as a tree. A statement of phylogeny among objects assumes homology and depends on classification. Phylogeny states a topology of the relationships based on classification according to similarity of one or more sets of characters, or on a model of evolutionary processes. In many cases, phylogenetic relationships based on different characters are consistent, and support one another. If different characters induce inconsistent phylogenetic relationships, they all are dubious. Conversely, note that the same similarity data may be consistent with different possible topologies or trees.
 
Molecular approaches to phylogeny developed against a background of traditional taxonomy, based on a variety of morphological characters, embryology, and from fossils, information about the geological context (stratigraphy).