Journal of the Indian Institute of Science最新文献

Background

Dairy products have been used for centuries and were generally believed to be healthy. Recently, dairy products have been implicated in the rise of non-communicable diseases especially new onset type 2 diabetes (T2D). However, the available data have been inconsistent.

Objective

To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of all the available prospective studies on the effect of dairy products with incident (new onset) T2D.

Methods

A total of 3009 articles were retrieved from PubMed, Scopus, Medline and Science Direct from January 2000 to March 2022 from which 27 prospective cohort studies were included. We classified dairy products as ‘total dairy’ and ‘total milk’ and further stratified them based on their fat content and fermentation. A subgroup analysis was conducted in people of Asian and Western ethnicity.

Results

Globally, total dairy products [Relative risk (RR) − 0.14; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) − 0.23; − 0.05; I² = 30%], total fermented dairy [RR − 0.08; 95% CI − 0.16; − 0.00; I² = 41%], and plain yogurt [RR − 0.08; 95% CI − 0.15; − 0.01; I² = 34%] were inversely associated with incident T2D. Other dairy products including low and high fat total dairy products, low and high fat milk and cheese had a neutral effect with no significant association with T2D. Subgroup analysis by ethnicity suggested similar findings with total dairy products and milk having protective effects on T2D among the Asian population while fermented dairy products were protective against T2D in western populations. Among the fermented dairy products, plain yogurt, in particular, showed protection against T2D across both ethnicities. Further, subgroup analysis by age showed that the consumption of high fat dairy predisposed younger adults to T2D.

Conclusion

Total and fermented dairy products, particularly plain yogurt, are protective against new onset T2D while milk, cheese and other dairy products have a neutral effect with no effect on incident T2D.

Study Registration Number

This protocol was registered on the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews, PROSPERO (CRD42021249202).

Prebiotic chemical evolution that led to the emergence of life on primitive Earth is interlinked with the delivery of organic material through the impact of comets, asteroids and meteorites. The catastrophic nature of impact leads to significant damage to planetary bodies. The high pressure and temperature can cause molecules to break apart and they may not survive in such extreme conditions. Also, impact-induced shock can cause impacted molecules to undergo vibration, dissociation, deformation, depending on their chemical properties and thus can offer enormous potential for the synthesis of building blocks of life. Novel experimental and theoretical approaches are required to simulate the phenomena that occur during impacts. In this brief review, we discuss impacts and related processes through laboratory experiments and simulations that study the impact-shock chemistry and its role in the Origins of Life.

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The Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes (IMG/M) system is a web-based platform that provides access to the wealth of public sequence data arising from diverse environments and enables the user to answer biological questions. In this review, we explore IMG’s tools and features using genome data for genus Deinococcus isolates as well as metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). We use various comparative genomic and visualization tools to investigate this genus and address specific research questions.

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Long-term space habitation for exploratory missions or colonization will involve significant health risks to astronauts living in enclosed habitats in altered gravity, for years at a time with no resupply from Earth [Taylor and Sommer (Int J Antimicrob Agents 26:183–187, 2005)]. Permanent bases on Mars, in deep space, and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn may one day be established, putting space colonists far out of the reach of terrestrial material or medical aid. Microgravity, low oxygen levels and radiation exposure greatly increase cellular oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction, bone and muscle loss, cancer risk, central nervous system dysfunction, and a whole host of other issues for which our Earth-based evolutionary lineage has not prepared humanity [Afshinnekoo et al. (Cell 183:1162–1184, 2020); Patel et al. (NPJ Microgravity 6:33, 2020)]. All of these issues, along with potential malnutrition and the psychological stress of confinement with a limited number of individuals [Oluwafemi et al. (Life Sci Space Res 28:26–31, 2021)], and without access to the natural world, inevitably will lead to decreased immune function, making astronauts more vulnerable to infection by secondary pathogens which normally operate as human commensals (not to mention primary pathogens that can infect healthy individuals). Although on Earth the shelf life of many medications including antibiotics is much longer than previously thought, these medications degrade much more rapidly in the high-radiation environment of space [Du et al. (AAPS J 13:299–308, 2011); Blue et al. (NPJ Microgravity 5:14, 2019)]. Astronauts on long-term missions, or colonists on other planets, will likely need to be able to manufacture life-saving drugs in situ. In particular, if unforeseen antimicrobial-resistant pathogens emerge in space habitats which are not treatable with current antibiotics, new antibiotics will need to be developed. This is one problem that cannot be solved entirely remotely, as the antibiotics must be tested against the pathogen in question. Most antibiotics used on Earth are natural products derived from microbes, or synthetic variants thereof; future space colonists will need to make use of the biodiversity of their space habitats and mine the ecological relationships between whatever microbial species they bring with them. Tools for antibiotic discovery must also be created or adapted for use in the space environment. Examples are methods for studying minimum inhibitory concentrations for different microbial interactions in space, and producing databases of the whole genome sequences of common isolates from space stations such as the International Space Station (ISS) for genome mining of biosynthetic gene clusters and potential mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance. Other technology needs are building space-hardy liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC–MS) platforms to link to molecular networking tools, and designing provisions for fermen