Publications

Water pollution due to waste effluents of the textile industry is seriously causing various health problems in humans. Water pollution with pathogenic bacteria, especially Escherichia coli (E. coli) and other microbes is due to the mixing of fecal material with drinking water, industrial and domestic sewage, pasture and agricultural runoff. Among the chemical pollutants, organic dyes due to toxic nature, are one of the major contaminants of industrial wastewater. Adequate sanitation services and drinking quality water would eliminate 200 million cases of diarrhea, which results in 2.1 million less deaths caused by diarrheal disease due to E. coli each year. Nanotechnology is an excellent platform as compared to conventional treatment methods of water treatment and remediation from microorganisms and organic dyes. In the current study, toxicity and carcinogenicity of the organic dyes have been studied as well as the remediation/inactivation of dyes and microorganism has been discussed. Remediation by biological, physical and chemical methods has been reviewed critically. A physical process like adsorption is cost-effective, but can't degrade dyes. Biological methods were considered to be ecofriendly and cost-effective. Microbiological degradation of dyes is cost-effective, eco-friendly and alternative to the chemical reduction. Besides, certain enzymes especially horseradish peroxidase are used as versatile catalysts in a number of industrial processes. Moreover, this document has been prepared by gathering recent research works related to the dyes and microbial pollution elimination from water sources by using heterogeneous photocatalysts, metal nanoparticles catalysts, metal oxides and enzymes.

Design and development of potential pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 3 (PDK3) inhibitors have gained attention because of their possible therapeutic uses in lung cancer therapy. In the present study, the binding affinity of naturally occurring alkaloids, hordenine, vincamine, tryptamine, cinchonine, and colcemid was measured with PDK3. The molecular docking and fluorescence binding studies suggested that all these compounds show a considerable binding affinity for PDK3. Among them, the affinity of hordenine to the PDK3 was excellent (<i>K</i> = 10⁶ M^-1) which was further complemented by isothermal titration calorimetric measurements. Hordenine binds in the active site pocket of PDK3 and forms a significant number of non-covalent interactions with functionally important residues. All-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulation study suggested that the PDK3-hordenine complex is stabilized throughout the trajectory of 100ns and leads to fewer conformational changes. The enzyme inhibition studies showed that hordenine inhibits the activity of PDK3 with an IC₅₀ value of 5.4 µM. Furthermore, hordenine showed a cytotoxic effect on human lung cancer cells (A549 and H1299) with an admirable IC₅₀ value. However, it did not inhibit the growth of HEK293 cells up to 200 µM, indicating its non-toxicity to non-cancerous cell lines. In summary, our findings provide the basis for the therapeutic implication of hordenine and its derivatives in lung cancer and PDK3-related diseases after required in vivo validation.

Quantitative evaluation of the mechanical behavior of molecular materials by a nanoindentation technique has gained prominence recently. However, all the reported data have been on room-temperature properties despite many interesting phenomena observed in them with variations in temperature. In this paper, we report the results of nanoindentation experiments conducted as a function of temperature, T, between 283 and 343 K, on the major faces of three organic crystals: saccharin, sulfathiazole (form 2), and l-alanine, which are distinct in terms of the number and strength of intermolecular interactions in them. Results show that elastic modulus, E, and hardness, H, decrease markedly with increasing T. While E decreases linearly with T, the variations in H with T are not so, and were observed to drop by ∼50% over the range of T investigated. The slope of the linear fits to E vs T for the organic crystals was found to be around 1, which is considerably higher than the values of 0.3–0.5 reported in the literature for metallic, ionic, and covalently bonded crystalline materials. Possible implications of the observed remarkable changes in H for pharmaceutical manufacturing are highlighted.

An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.

Compounds having redox-active ferrocenyl groups have attracted considerable interest in several branches of Chemistry and Materials Science. Here we investigate a chalcone (compound I) having a ferrocenyl group which is further derivatized to pyrazoline to achieve a hybrid molecule having a ferrocenyl couple to a heterocyclic ring (compound II). These compounds were characterized using spectroscopic techniques including the (1H-NMR and 13C-NMR), UV-Visible and infrared (FT-IR) studies to confirm the structures and investigate the electronic properties of I and II. Furthermore, we confirmed the three-dimensional structures and any relevant interactions among the molecules in their unit cells using single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. The molecules of both compounds stabilized by the C-H...halogen interactions, where Br acts as a halogen atom. Finally, the redox properties of I and II were accessed by cyclic voltammetry experiments. It is observed that the chalcone derivative has larger oxidation potential than the pyrazoline derivative.

An ultrafine PtNi nanoparticle-decorated Ni nanosheet array with ultralow Pt loading acts as a superior hydrogen-evolving electrocatalyst.

A hierarchical meso-/micro-porous graphitized carbon with uniform mesopores and ordered micropores, graphitized frameworks, and extra-high surface area of ∼2200 m2/g, was successfully synthesized through a simple one-step chemical vapor deposition process. The commercial mesoporous zeolite Y was utilized as a meso-/ micro-porous template, and the small-molecule methane was employed as a carbon precursor. The as-prepared hierarchical meso-/micro-porous carbons have homogeneously distributed mesopores as a host for electrolyte, which facilitate Li+ ions transport to the large-area micropores, resulting a high reversible lithium ion storage of 1000 mA h/g and a high columbic efficiency of 65% at the first cycle.

A series of scarce fulleropyrrolines were synthesized via DMAP-mediated one-step reaction of [60]fullerene with commercially inexpensive aromatic aldehydes and arylmethanamines in the absence or presence of manganese(III) acetate. In the case of aminodiphenylmethane, novel 2,5,5-trisubstituted fulleropyrrolines could be easily obtained without the addition of manganese(III) acetate. As for arylmethanamines without α-substitutions, the addition of manganese(III) acetate was required to suppress the formation of fulleropyrrolidines, in order to generate the desired 2,5-disubstituted fulleropyrrolines. Two tautomers were produced as expected when different aryl groups (Ar¹ ≠ Ar²) from aromatic aldehydes and arylmethanamines were employed in the synthesis. A plausible reaction mechanism for the formation of fulleropyrrolines is proposed.