GIR

I WILL BE GOING FOR AN EXCURTION TO GIR SOON ,SO JUST WANTED TO DO SOME PRE TRIP STUDY
THIS IS WHAT I FOUND

Gir Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park
Location : Gir, 42-kms From Junagadh, Gujarat
Nearest Access : Junagadh (42-kms)
Main Wildlife Found : Asiatic Lions, Leopards, Chowsingha
Coverage Area : 1412.13-sq-kms.

About Gir Wildlife SanctauryIn the southwest of the peninsular state of Gujarat, lies the 116 square-mile Gir sanctuary created to protect the last wild population of Lion outside the African regions. Since 1913 when the Lion population over here fell drastically to just 20 animals, the numbers have increased to around 300. The Asiatic lion is slightly smaller than its African cousin is and its mane is also smaller.

Flora in Gir National ParkThe Gir National Park is a mixed deciduous forest with teak, flame of the forest, some Acacia and Banyan trees. A distinct belt of vegetation is found along the main rivers and streams. Species like the Jambu, Karanj, Umro, Vad, Kalam, Charal, Sirus and Amli are found here. These trees are mostly broad leaved and evergreen, giving the area a cool shade and the moisture content.

Major Wildlife Attractions in Gir Wildlife SanctuaryIn India the Lion population is spread across the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. But Gir is not just about Lions, the second most commonly found predator in the Gir is Leopard. Infact, Gir national park is also home to one of the largest Leopard populations in any park in India, and especially in the hotter season they can sometimes be seen at night close to the lodges.

Other animal residents of the Gir national park are Sambar Deer, Chital Spotted Deer, Nilgai Antelope, Chowsingha Four-Horned Antelope, Chinkara Gazelle, Wild Boar, Langur Monkey, Jackal, and Hyena and numerous birds like Paradise Flycatcher, Bonneli's Eagle, Crested Serpent Eagle, Woodpeckers Flamingo etc.

http://indianwildlifeportal.com/

FLAGELLA AND CILIA

A flagellum (plural, flagella) is a long, whip like projection composed of microtubules. They help propel cells and organisms in a whip like motion. The flagellum of eukaryotes usually moves with an “S” motion, and is surrounded by cell membrane.
Prokaryotes may have one or many flagella for locomotion, always outside the cell membrane and normally visible only with the aid of the electron microscope. In some bacterial species the flagella twine together helically outside the cell body to form a bundle, large enough to be visible in the light microscope. These structures are quite unrelated to the flagella of eukaryotes.
A eukaryote cell usually only has about one or two flagella. The flagella also may have hair or mastigonemes, scales, connecting membranes and internal rods to something. Flagellates have one or more flagella, they move by whipping the flagella on the flagellate side to side. A sperm cell moves by means of a single flagellum. Cilia or flagella can also extend out from the stationary cells that are held in place as part of a tail goes into layer of tissue in a multicellular organism. In Eukaryotic cells, flagella are active in movements involving feeding and sensation.
Eukaryotic flagella are not the same as flagella of bacteria. They have an internal structure comprised of nine doublets of microtubules forming

a cylinder around a central pair of microtubules. The peripheral doublets are linked to each other by proteins. These proteins include dynein, a molecular motor which can cause flagella to bend and propel the cell relative to its environment, or propel water or mucus relative to the cell.
Bacterial flagella are helical filaments that rotate like screws.
Archaeal flagella are superficially similar, but are different in many details and considered non-homologous.
Eukaryotic flagella - those of animal, plant, and protist cells - are complex cellular projections that lash back and forth.
Sometimes the last are called cilia or undulipodia to emphasize their distinctiveness

Examples of bacterial flagaella arrangement schemes. A-Monotrichous; B-Lophotrichous; C-Amphitrichous; D-Peritrichous;

COURTESY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum

SUICIDAL BAGS a.k.a Lysosomes

Lysosomes are organelles that contain digestive enzymes (acid hydrolases). They digest excess or worn out organelles, food particles, and engulfed viruses or bacteria. The membrane surrounding a lysosome prevents the digestive enzymes inside from destroying the cell. Lysosomes can fuse with vacuoles and dispense their enzymes into the vacuole, digesting its contents. They are built in the Golgi apparatus. The name “lysosome” came from the Greek words “lysis” which means dissolution or destruction and "soma" which means body. They are frequently nicknamed "suicide-bags" or "suicide-sacs" by cell biologists due to their role in autolysis. Lysosomes were discovered by the Belgian cytologist Christian de Duve in 1949.

Acidic Environment
At pH 4.8, the interior of the lysosomes is more acidic than the cytosol (pH 7). The lysosome single membrane stabilizes the low pH by pumping in protons (H+) from the cytosol, and also protects the cytosol, and therefore the rest of the cell, from the degradative enzymes within the lysosome. For this reason, should a lysosome's acid hydrolases leak into the cytosol, their potential to damage the cell will be reduced, because they will not be at their optimum pH.
The constant pH of 4.8 is maintained by proton pumps and Cl- ion channels

Creation
They are involved in the creation of enzymes that undergo phagocytosis. All these enzymes are produced in the endoplasmic reticulum, and transported and processed through the Golgi apparatus. The Golgi apparatus produces lysosomes by budding. Each acid hydrolase is then targeted to a lysosome by phosphorylation. The lysosome itself is likely to be safe from enzymatic action due to having proteins in the inner membrane which has a three-dimensional molecular structure that protects vulnerable bonds from enzymatic attack

Enzymes
Some important enzymes in lysosomes are:
Lipase, which digests lipids,
Carbohydrases, which digest carbohydrates (e.g., sugars),
Proteases, which digest proteins,
Nucleases, which digest nucleic acids.
Phosphatases, which digest phosphoric acid monoesters
Lysosomal enzymes are synthesized in the cytosol and the endoplasmic reticulum, where they receive a mannose-6-phosphate tag that targets them for the lysosome. Aberrant lysosomal targeting causes inclusion-cell disease, whereby enzymes do not properly reach the lysosome, resulting in accumulation of waste within these organelles.

Functions
The lysosomes are used for the digestion of macromolecules from phagocytosis (ingestion of cells), from the cell's own recycling process (where old components such as worn out mitochondria are continuously destroyed and replaced by new ones, and receptor proteins are recycled), and for autophagic cell death, a form of programmed self-destruction, or autolysis, of the cell, which means that the cell is digesting itself.
Other functions include digesting foreign bacteria that invade a cell and helping repair damage to the plasma membrane by serving as a membrane patch, sealing the wound. Lysosomes also do much of the cellular digestion required to digest tails of tadpoles and to remove the web from the fingers of a 3-6 month old fetus. This process of programmed cell death is called apoptosis

Clinical relevance
There are a number of illnesses that are caused by the malfunction of the lysosomes or one of their digestive proteins, e.g., Tay-Sachs disease, or Pompe's disease. These are caused by a defective or missing digestive protein, which leads to the accumulation of substrates within the cell, resulting in impaired cell metabolism.
Broadly, these can be classified as mucopolysaccharidoses, GM2 gangliosidoses, lipid storage disorders, glycoproteinoses, mucolipidoses, or leukodystrophies.

COURTESY;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysosome

BACTERIOPHAGES AND THEIR DIVISION CELL CYCLES

STRUCTURE OF T-4 BACTERIOPHAGE

LIFE CYCLE OF BACTERIOPHAGE

APTAMER

Aptamers are oligonucleic acid or peptide molecules selected from a large random sequence pool to bind to specific target molecule. They can be used for both basic research and clinical purposes as macromolecular drugs.
More specifically, aptamers can be classified as:
DNA or RNA aptamers. They consist of (usually short) strands of oligonucleotides.
Peptide aptamers. They consist of a short variable peptide domain, attached at both ends to a protein scaffold.
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RNA and DNA aptamers
Aptamers are nucleic acid binding species that have been evolutionary engineered through in vitro selection or equivalently, SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) to bind to various molecular targets such as small molecules, proteins, nucleic acids, and even organisms. Aptamers offer the utility for biotechnological and therapeutic applications as they offer molecular recognition properties that rival that of the commonly used biomolecule, antibodies. In addition to their discriminate recognition, aptamers offer advantages over antibodies as they can be engineered completely in a test tube, are readily produced by chemical synthesis, possess desirable storage properties, and elicit little or no immunogenicity in therapeutic applications.
In 1990, two labs independently developed the technique of selection with the Gold lab utilizing the term SELEX for their process of selecting RNA ligands against T4 DNA polymerase and the Szostak lab, coining the term in vitro selection, selecting RNA ligands against various organic dyes. The Szostak lab also coined the term aptamer (from the Latin, aptus, meaning ‘to fit’) for these nucleic acid-based ligands. Two years later, the Szostak lab and Gilead Sciences, independent of one another, utilized in vitro selection schemes to evolve single stranded DNA ligands for organic dyes and human coagulant, thrombin, respectively.
Interestingly enough, the notion of selection in vitro was actually preceded twenty-plus years prior when the infamous Sol Spiegelman utilized a Qbeta replication system as a means for the evolution of a self-replicating molecule. In addition, a year before the publishing of in vitro selection and SELEX, Gerald Joyce utilized a system that he termed ‘directed evolution’ to evolve a nucleic acid enzyme, a ribozyme.
Over the course of the next six years, many researchers have been utilizing aptamer selection as a means for application and discovery. Recently, in 2001, the process of in vitro selection has been automated by the Ellington lab at The University of Texas at Austin, reducing the duration of an in vitro selection experiment from six months to three days.
While the process of artificial engineering of nucleic acid ligands is highly interesting to biology and biotechnology, the notion of aptamers in the natural world had yet to be uncovered until 2002 when Ronald Breaker and his coworkers discovered a nucleic acid-based genetic regulatory element called a riboswitch that possesses similar molecular recognition properties to the artificially made aptamers. In addition to the discovery of a new mode of genetic regulation, this adds further credence to the notion of an ‘RNA World,’ a postulated stage in time in the origins of life on Earth.
While the development of aptamer evolution is mildly amusing, its application is truly monumental. Recent developments in aptamer-based therapeutics have been rewarded in the form of the first FDA approved aptamer-based drug in treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), called Macugen offered by Eyetech Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer. In addition, companies such as Cambridge, MA-based Archemix have been examining the pharmacological properties of aptamers against targets such as the coagulant thrombin for use in postoperative treatments, complement c5 implicated in inflammatory-related tissue injuries, platelet-derived growth factor that is involved in the diabetic retinopathy disease state, and a few others.
In addition to the development of aptamer-based therapeutics, many researchers such as the Ellington lab and the Boulder, CO-based SomaLogic have been developing diagnostic techniques for whole cell protein profiling called proteomics, and medical diagnostics for the distinction of disease versus healthy states.
As a resource for all in vitro selection and SELEX experiments, the Ellington lab has developed the Aptamer Database cataloging all published experiments. This is found at http://aptamer.icmb.utexas.edu/.
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Peptide aptamers
Peptide aptamers are proteins that are designed to interfere with other protein interactions inside cells. They consist of a variable peptide loop attached at both ends to a protein scaffold. This double structural constraint greatly increases the binding affinity of the peptide aptamer to levels comparable to an antibody's (nanomolar range).
The variable loop length is typically comprised of 10 to 20 amino acids, and the scaffold may be any protein which have good solubility and compacity properties. Currently, the bacterial protein Thioredoxin-A is the most used scaffold protein, the variable loop being inserted within the reducing active site, which is a -Cys-Gly-Pro-Cys- loop in the wild protein, the two Cysteins lateral chains being able to form a disulfide bridge.
Peptide aptamer selection can be made using different systems, but the most used is currently the yeast two-hybrid system.
Selection of Ligand Regulated Peptide Aptamers (LiRPAs) has been demonstrated. By displaying 7 amino acid peptides from a novel scaffold protein based on the trimeric FKBP-rapamycin-FRB structure, interaction between the randomized peptide and target molecule can be controlled by the small molecule Rapamycin or non-immunosuppressive analogs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptamer