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Castor biodiesel run in Ethiopia

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The concept of renewable energy has really taken momentum all around the world as the African nation Ethiopia has made moves to initiate ventures on bio-diesel production from castor oil.The prime objective is to reduce the energy burden of the nation since experts  claim that Ethiopia allocates 90% of its foreign revenue to fossil fuel import and hence focus has been applied to exploit the renewable resources for ensuring the sustainability in nation’s economy.

Among the leading Ethiopian energy investors,Global Energy Ethiopia(GEE) has started its operation on renewable energy  since 2007 by pumping US$ 20 million into castor and jatropha seed farming and processing business.According to sources,GEE firm has an opportunity to process 40,000 tonnes of vegetable oil in its investment on concerned bioenergy crops from 30,000 hectares of leased land.Besides GEE, other firms namely Eco Energy has also entered into  bio-energy sector with collaborations from abroad.

According to Ethiopian Investment Agency(EIA),the potential of 25 million hectares of land suited for bio-diesel farming when tapped completely,Ethiopia becomes one of the highest producers of bio-diesel with an estimated capacity of 20 million liters of crude vegetable oil.

Reports such as this are motivating because the nations that have been torn by the economic crisis,civil wars and political instabilities, would have a tremendous scope to lift their socio-economic and environmental consciousness at the competitive International stage.

For reference: http://energybusinessdaily.com/renewables/ethiopia-sets-its-sights-on-biodiesel/

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Castor oil for nanoparticle fabrication

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Nanotechnology is a emerging field of applied sciences where the functional units are in the magnitude of one part of a billion volume and appear to be elite operating than conventional micro units. In-organics and organic materials have been exploited to act as nanomaterials so far and silver nanoparticles(Ag-NPs) are one of the most potent materials among them for nano-composite fabrications.However scientists are hindered to generate Ag-NP units with expected level of functionality because they frequently suffer from limitations of aggregation of Ag-NPs with conventional  solvent medium that interferes with activities of final product and it made them to search for better performing medium. Finally a breakthrough solution to the problem came out from the Malaysian researchers when they revealed the fabrication of Ag-NPs by laser ablation of silver plate in the presence of castor oil.

Researchers claimed that the amphiphilic nature of the castor oil makes it to interact with silver element in an electrostatically regulated way which ultimately generates nanoparticles with expected characteristics.A quantitative analysis by normal distribution showed castor oil based nanoparticles are uniform in their size to a maximum extent and prove to be stable.Final material assessment was studied by advanced spectroscopic and electron microscopic techniques with definite controls.

Castor oil is an affordable material economically on a global scale and exploiting it for such type of advanced studies would shatter the barriers of expensiveness normally witnessed in technological development but it would have been better to realize when experimental confirmation had been made on activities of castor oil based Ag-NPs.

For reference: Zamiri et al, International Journal of Nanomedicine 2011:6 565–568

Change in trend of castor seed and oil prices

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Castor seed and oil finally saw a drift in its market prices when castor seed bold stood at Rs:5,300 from the previous days close of Rs:5,400 per quintal.The trend was reflected in the castor oil prices as well which fell to Rs:1090 as against Rs:1110 per 10 kg.As the demand was sub-dued from soap industries and shippers, castor seed futures also declined to Rs:5070 per quintal which was about Rs:139 less from its previous close.

A control in the price of castor based commodities greatly relieves the pressure for business exchanges both India and abroad in the current day scenario as it is important to note that prices of castor seed and oil have doubled comprehensively in a brief span of six months.

For reference:http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/refined-palmolein-easepoor-demand/132063/&tp=on

Interpretation of castor bean and Ricin as reproductive toxins.

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Ricin toxin is well to act as a sub- acute toxin in humans to produce lethality between 2-5 days on the basis of concentration and portals of administration of toxin.However its role in reproductive toxicity has not been documented well and Jordanian scientists have made an attempt to assess the role for ricin in reproductive toxicity in pregnant female rats.

Rats intraperitoneally treated with ricin and castor bean extracts displayed symptoms of body weight loss and death of foetuses at 5-9 days of pregnancy while attrition of implantation sites was noticed with first 6 consecutive days of pregnancy.The toxicological function was not significantly reversed with gonadotrophin hormone in experimental subjects exposed to toxin.Hence the researchers were able to conclude that castor bean constituents including ricin have anti implantation and ovulation properties through their overlapped reproductive toxicological studies.

Results of this study is difficult to interpret as multiple parameters including strain,species,sex,age,feed,time,concentration of the toxin,mode of administration,animal size of the experimental study have a profound influence in the outcome of the study.Adopting International standard guidelines in toxicology  will greatly improves the precision and accuracy of the experiment.

For reference: http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/articl/S0010-7824%2899%2900045-1/abstract

Role for MALDI-MS in ricin detection.

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Ricin is a lethal cytotoxin present abundantly in castor seed.People have identified the protein way back but no effective, timely sensitive antidote or assay kit has ever been formulated so far.However advancements in protein technology have rendered a solution today through application of an advanced mass spectrometry for the detection of ricin, called as Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Mass spectrometry(MALDI-MS).It is extensively applied for detection of proteins which are unknown and whose magnitude is difficult to determine by conventional resolution principles.

Australian scientists tried to exploit it in the context of ricin chemistry and have prepared a polymorphic peptide mass fingerprint of ricin and its related proteins  following an initial treatment with trypsin.They were excited to watch the extent of protein resolution by MALDI-MS in purified and crude preparations of ricin from castor seeds without ambiguity. Scientists further claimed that their protocol has  scope for improvements and consumes minimal time to probe the presence of toxin from sample preparations.

MALDI-MS proved its utility in toxin chemistry of proteins as a valuable tool and will expand its wing to conquer new protein niches in biology.

For reading: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20486671

Strange proteins in vacuolar membranes of castor seed

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Castor seeds are energy reserves of superior quality whose molecular transformations play a vital role in seed development and germination.They are compartmentalized in specialized sub-cellular systems encapsulated by membranes.Membrane re-modeling is a fundamental phenomenon demanded to regulate the functional activities,mass exchange etc of its interior components.Therefore an understanding of molecular factors constituting the membrane would yield us a transparent picture of the seed molecular transformations triggered by cues.

Researchers from USA have isolated membranes from castor seed protein bodies thought to play a key role in protein utilization for seed development.They followed a differential extraction method for the selective isolation of vacuolar membrane and purified it with advanced centrifugation techniques.A protein fingerprint was generated ultimately which revealed unique proteins whose functional activities are yet to characterized.Lipids chemistry proved to be complex but showed typical members.

Characterization of novel proteins is an exciting field and this research paper lays an authentic platform to make in-depth studies.

For further reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16660999

Marker assisted probing of castor toxin.

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Molecular fingerprinting of DNA proves to be the most reliable of all biological assays applied today in spite of an extensive application of other biomolecules as markers in different functional evaluation studies.Ricin, Castor toxin profiling is not an exception as researchers from USA have devised a protocol for the detection of ricin in food as an accidental or intentional contaminant on the basis of a DNA based molecular marker, unique to castor.The experimental result indicated a sensitivity of 5 microgram of toxin per unit gram of ground beef which is promising according to scientists. They claim further that their methodology’ sensitivity is well below the threshold oral toxicity levels of toxin.

Molecular marker are highly polymorphic and hence the fingerprint that they generate will display a minimum probability for  mismatch but requires a high technical skill.It also has a critical limitation that any insignificant contamination interfering with experimental template DNA  would readily produce a magnified artifact and lead to misinterpretations.

For further reading: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17227091

Fullerene-castor oil molecular association

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Fullerenes are allotropes of carbon holding a centre stage in nanotechnology for its unique physio-chemical properties to exhibit applications which seem to be superior to classical technologies.Scientists from Italy have produced a turning point and found that fullerenes are capable of interacting with lipids of vegetable origin including castor.The significance is that the fullerene-lipid complex is not generated of a mere physical association instead it is  a materialistically transformed chemical reaction where allotropic carbon under study serves as a reductant to covalently bind the spontaneously oxidized castor oil.

The fullerene behaviour was functionally evaluated with a standard solvent against auto-oxidized vegetable oils and found to have a consistency in electron transfer nature.The experiment was repeated with other lipids as well produced from different vegetable sources and an identical reductant activity of fullerene was noticed.Spectrophotometry was the tool applied to analyze the fullerenes chemical activity.

As it is well proved that fullerenes are drivers of nanotechnology and probably any molecule associated with it may present strange applications subjected for exploitation.Surprisingly, the experimental assessment shows castor based lipids as one among the candidate members to display a complex which when characterized at molecular and elemental level would link and expand fullerenes potential in biology.

For reading:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20338159

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Unique molecular mechanisms in castor protein mobilization

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Castor plant is reported to have an advanced protein molecular machinery for the conversion of storage lipids to carbohydrates mediated through glyoxysomes  to accomplish this process.Carbohydrate bio-synthesis from lipids requires the catalytic function of isocitrate lyase in the glyoxylate cycle whose synthesis occurs in cytolplasm but functional activity is confined to glyoxysomes.The  signal sequences of the enzyme implicated in transportation to its right sub-cellular compartment stand to be a subject of debate as contradictory results have been made so far regarding this phenomenon.To unravel this,researchers have made genetic mutations in sites which is at the carboxy terminus of the enzyme which in its wild type proved to show an homology with standard isoforms from sunflower and Arabidopsis. in vitro studies on the mutant variants of isocitrate lyase revealed an import of the mutant enzyme into glyoxysomes which is further supplemented by the localization of the mutant enzyme in the concerned organelles under in vivo transgenic model lines.

The results turned to be startling for the researchers as they finally concluded that the transportation is driven by hidden signal sequences to be discovered and basically distinct from the members characterized earlier or independent of their experimental sequence.

Isocitrate lyase function is crucial for the plant development andd probing it through genetics and biochemical analysis would enable scientists to have a better understanding of the germination and glycobiology in castor.

For detailed reference:http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/112/4/1457.full.pdf

Consistent surge in castor seed prices

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Castor seed prices in the market continue to remain high.Commodity prices stood at Rs:5140 per quintal with an increase of Rs:48 for the future trading in June.NCDEX prices rates for April futures of castor seed also showed a surge with percentage rise of 0.94%.Low arrival of castor seed and an increased demand for oil from abroad make the prices to stay high atleast for the near future.Experts warn of advanced procurements so as to ensure a smooth productive run in castor oil based manufacturing units.

For reading: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/castorseed-futures-recovershort-covering/130790/&tp=on