Monday, August 2, 2010

Tagetes erectus, Marigold, Thin layer chromatography, Potential

Herbal medicines originated from the ancient use of wild plants. Today, with the possibility of carefully controlling the cultivation of medicinal plants and even improving them genetically, it is possible to develop and market a wide variety and quality of herbal drugs of consistent chemical composition and excellent quality to treat various diseases. One of the important constituent of Tagetes erectus may possess that quality.1 Tagetes erectus belong to the family Compositae. It is a small shrub; the plant grows upto a height of 1-3 feet and spreads about 0.5-1 feet. The leaf is arranged in opposite to subopposite with pinnately compound leaf. Margin is denate with oblong in shape bears green in colour with a blade length less than 2 inch. The leaves are 4 to 11cm long and very deeply pinnatifid, with the lobes lanceolate, coarsely and sharply toothed, and 1 to 2.5cm long , the flowers are pale to deep yellow.2

The leaves of Tagetes erectus were collected from the wild sources of Shirpur forest, and it was identified and authenticated by Dr. Sagar Kshirsagar, Dept. of Botany, SSVPS, College of science, Dhulia. A voucher specimen is placed in the Dept. of Pharmacognosy for further reference. The collected plants were washed, dried and were pulverized with the help of mechanical grinder and was passed through sieve no 40, and stored in closed vessels for future use. The fresh leaves were used for Microscopy Identification.
Posted by at


Bioelectronic DNA detection involves forming an electronic circuit mediated by nucleic acid hybridization and it serves as the basis for a DNA detection system called eSensor™ [1-4]. This system uses low-density DNA chips containing electrodes coated with DNA capture probes. Target DNA present in the sample hybridizes specifically both to capture probes and ferrocene labeled signal probes in solution thereby generating an electric current. Currente Sensor DNA chips contain as many as 36 electrodes for simultaneous detection of multiple pathogens from a single sample.

Many pathogens cause both acute and chronic disease at relatively low copy number and may be difficult or impossible to propagate in culture. Thus, most pathogen detection systems rely on nucleic acid amplification by using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). One highly effective amplification strategy targets conserved sequences among the family of organisms of interest. Such broad-range PCR strategies have been used to identify and characterize several known and previously uncharacterized bacteria [5,6] and viruses [7,8]. In order to maximize the utility of these effective pathogen nucleic acid amplification systems, amplification needs to be coupled with rapid, sensitive, and specific detection. Bioelectronic DNA detection by use of the eSensor chip might fulfill this need.

Human papillomaviruses (HPV) serve as an ideal model system for determining the efficiency and feasibility of eSensor DNA detection technology since there are at least 30 distinct genital HPV types that can be effectively amplified with broad-range consensus PCR primers. We designed two eSensor chips, each containing 14 probes specific for the conserved L1 region of the HPV genome. We evaluated clinical cervical cytology samples known to contain one or more HPV types. The eSensor DNA detection platform successfully detected the correct HPV type in most of these clinical samples, demonstrating that the system provides a rapid, sensitive, specific, and economical approach for multiple-pathogen detection and identification from a single sample.Background We used human papillomaviruses (HPV) as a model system to evaluate the utility of a nucleic acid, hybridization-based bioelectronic DNA detection platform (eSensor) in identifying multiple pathogens.