Molecular Biology: Open Access

Snakebites are a serious public health problem in many regions of the world, particularly in rural areas lacking medical facilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 81,000–138,000 people die each year from snakebites worldwide.

Cardiomyopathies are an important category of cardiovascular diseases associated with cardiac dysfunction. The extracellular matrix (ECM) plays a vital role in maintaining cardiac homeostasis by offering structural support, assisting mechanical transmission and by providing vital signals to different cells of the cardiac system. Alterations in the ECM profile are associated with the pathogenesis of heart failure. This review discusses on the alterations in gene expression signatures of cardiomyopathy with special emphasis of hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy. Understanding the mechanism of ECM remodeling and regulation in cardiomyopathy is helpful in the identification of therapeutic targets to diminish remodeling, reduce cardiac dysfunction and stimulate myocardial regeneration.

Tobacco is reported to be consists of more than 2000 compounds, and these constituents would change during the process of curing and combustion. The leaves and juice were much used for skin disorders in earlier generation. Since tobacco is the most important avoidable plant because of large number of premature death and diseases in the world due to cancer. The tobacco plant is more seen as destructive plant than as herb. Herein we interested in studying the phytochemical constituents present in the methanol extract of tobacco plant commonly available in Coimbatore district, Tamilnadu, India. About 36 compounds were obtained and most of them are found to be already reported carcinogens.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common age-related neurodegenerative disease caused by the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc), which influences the basal ganglia network that results in a host of the motor and cognitive deficits. The autosomal dominant and recessive form of Parkinson’s disease caused by the abnormal aggregation of Alpha-synuclein and PTEN- induced putative kinase 1 protein. The present study focuses on developing lead compounds and antibody mimetic oligopeptides for inhibiting PD targets such as SNCA and PINK1. Virtual screening and docking were performed to find the best lead compounds further the docked complex were subjected to a molecular dynamics approach to predict the stability and the lowest conformation energy of the compounds. Nearly 5780 Similar compounds of carbidopa/levodopa are used to predict the potential lead molecules inhibiting the target proteins. Four potential lead compounds selected from a total of 1865 compounds based on their drug likeness properties and docking score. Biological activity prediction and statistical analysis were used for validating the inhibition of lead molecules against target protein.