3 to 3%. The V. rotiferianus was also characterized for its tolerance toward heavy metals and antibiotics. Recurrent studies all over the world regarding heavy metal and antibiotics effect on bioluminescent bacteria revealed their sensitivity to even nanomolar quantities, which in turn makes them one of the imminent biomarkers or bioassay systems. Studies for the heavy metal resistance demonstrated that the bacterial strain is resistant to low concentrations of cadmium chloride, copper sulfate, mercuric chloride, lead acetate, zinc chloride and arsenous oxide. Isolated
luminescent bacterial strain showed fine intensity of luminescence in presence GSK1349572 of FeCl3, ZnCl2, PbSO4, salts while it was faded in presence p38 MAP Kinase pathway of HgSO4 whereas it is completely inhibited in presence of CuSO4, CoCl2 salts. V. rotiferianus found sensitive to the seven antibiotics tested while it showed resistance for ampicillin, sulphamethoxazole & furazolidone. When the isolate was grown only in presence of antibiotic ampicillin
the luminescence was enhanced which has indicated that ampicillin is acting as probable inducer of lux operon. 16S rRNA gene sequencing of the isolates revealed a 1423 bp rDNA gene sequence and by BLAST analysis culture was identified as V. rotiferianus. The isolated strain shown ability to sense even pico and nanomolar quantities of pharmaceutical pollutants such as remnant of antibiotic and heavy metals & hence offers to be a potential biosensing agent for the development of prospective biosensor. All authors have none to declare. The financial support under the Major research already project sponsored by University Grant of Commission, Govt. of India, New Delhi is gratefully acknowledged. “
“Tuberculosis is a chronic bacterial
infection, voices the World Health Organization1, 2 and 3 and caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In many parts of the world, the limitation is to use the combination of only five drugs to treat TB effectively, namely rifampicin (RIF), isoniazid (1NH), ethambutol (ETH), streptomycin (STR) and pyrazinamide (PZA). Limitations involved in the chemotherapy of tuberculosis are because of secondary line drugs such as ethionamide, aminosalicylic acid, cycloserine, amikacin, kanamycin and capreomycin are toxic in nature and cannot be employed simultaneously. 4 The reemergence of TB infection is further complicated by an increase in cases, which are resistant to conventional antitubercular drug therapy. 5 On the other hand, in spite of toxicity on repeated dosing, isoniazid (1NH) is still considered a first-line drug for chemotherapy of tuberculosis. 6 There are two basic approaches to develop a new drug for TB: (a) synthesis of analogues and modifications are derivatives of existing compounds for shortening and improving TB treatment and (b) searching for novel structures that the TB organism has never been presented with before for the multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB.