Category Archives: Castor Research

Preparation of Novel Antibacterial Castor Oil Based Polyurethane Membranes for Wound Dressing application

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In this study, preparation of novel antibacterial and cytocompatible polyurethane membranes for occlusive dressing, which can provide moist and sterile environment over mild exudative wounds is considered. An epoxy-terminated polyurethane (EPU) prepolymer based on castor oil and glycidyltriethylammonium chloride (GTEAC) as a reactive bactericidal agent were synthesized. Polyurethane membranes were prepared through cocuring of EPU and different content of GTEAC with 1,4-butane diamine. The physical and mechanical properties, as well as cytocompatibility and antibacterial performance of prepared membranes were studied.  Read – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbm.a.34672/abstract

A warm carpet from castor oil derived nylon

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In a world with an ever increasing focus on green products for people planet and profits (PPP), castor oil turns out to be an elite candidate to satisfy PPP. Recently Interface company came out with a bio-product, carpet tile and the manufacturer points that its new launch is basically an yarn with nylon blend, based of castor oil. In addition, developers strongly argue that the product is consistent in its performance to address consumer expectations and thus will encourage their “Mission Zero” aim  to replace petrochemical principles by 2020 from their product portfolios. The company’ reports regarding the supply chain also state the beneficial outcomes that castor plant can yield to farmers growing it on marginal lands.

It is evident that bio based carpet tile’  market performance on time would boost the innovative minds to develop it for mutual benefits of growers and firm on an extensive scale. To conclude, castor oil often known as an industrial oil for lubrication and polymers production keeps widening its application spectrum, truly a demanding feature for those who strive for quality, novelty and greening of products.

For reference: http://www.zawya.com/story/Interface_unveils_Fotosfera_its_first_product_made_from_biobased_nylon-ZAWYA20120917073331/

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Potency of Castor Biodiesel for Lubricant Production

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Lubricants are well known to act as substances for minimization of friction in locomotive engines and other spare parts. As we know they can be synthesized from multiple synthetic and natural sources and some of which prove to be environmentally recalcitrant and pose adverse effects.Studies indicate that nearly 12 million tonnes of lubricants are eliminated after usage and majority of them are disposed in a biologically unsafe manner. To reduce their prolonged existence, people are in relentless efforts to identify and formulate eco-safe lubricant substances.

The answer to this query has been recently addressed though biodiesel produced from castor oil.It is not surprising to implicate castor oil for lubricant synthesis as some of its prominent derivatives as 12-hydroxy stearic acid are well characterized lubricants. Now, castor biodiesel  what is to be fed as a fuel possesses typical properties to yield biodegradable lubricants with desired functions as oxidation stability, thermo-tolerance and high viscosity index etc. Researchers of this study have witnessed that the fluids generated from castor biodiesel esters are lubricative due to the presence of ricinoleic acid.

The results seem to be exiting to watch in a perspective where castor biodiesel effectively fails to compete with conventional fuels on certain fuel parameters. So, research initiatives on castor biodiesel such as this would add up its industrial scope in different dimensions with ecological significance.

For reference: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ls.1205/abstract

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Play off between castor oil and bio-components of human intestine

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It is not astonishing to see the action of this oil from castor seed on administration of it as a remedy to gastro-intestinal disorders across humans of all the ages in the world. Even then mystery with castor oil has remained all throughout the ages over the way this edible laxative works in physical system to display conditions of stool emergency. With science as a tool for facts, researchers at a German centre, The Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research finally have unraveled the mode by which castor oil expresses its functionality in the human body. Authours of the study report that it is exciting to watch that cells in intestine harbours a receptive protein called, EP3 that recognizes the ingested castor oil and mediates cells and their constituents to elicit the laxative effect. Following a robust experimental analysis in animal models to attribute the sensory factors of castor oil derived ricinoleic acid, scientific experts and critical analysts believe that there could be a modulation brought about in the human body to selectively harvest the therapeutic activities and avoiding irritating side effects from castor oil.

For reference: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/5608/scientists-uncover-mechanism-behind-ancient-drug

 

Castor oil to aid healing of wounds and cuts

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It is obvious to us that several plants act as excellent sources of chemicals with medicinal value which dwell either in a definite organ or whole bio-system.Castor seed oils are not an exception to this storage nature of plants where constituents in it tend to display therapeutic activities to cure the physical discomforts directly or indirectly.

With continued scope for natural products in global pharma divisions, a recent press release from firm, Morinda Bioactives, USA which it claims to be specialized in formulation of drugs on phyto-chemicals has reported that its launch of a new stream of drugs called Shield Biomedicals at International Leadership Conference Salt Lake City, Utah, contain castor oil derived chemicals as base ingredients to contribute for moisture retention function. As per the manufacturer’ statement, their ointment formulation with castor oil is a home remedy to wounds and burns etc with pain relieving properties.

Information source such as this keeps boosting the potential of castor oil in high value market sectors which the producer nations should realize well to upgrade their line of products from this vegetable oil, gifted for industries.

For reference: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/10/4480034/morinda-bioactives-releases-new.html

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Castor polymer to enlight automobile panels of Ford

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Castor oil is well known to act as a versatile feed material for the production of a diverse range of chemicals derivatives and polymers are one among the well known class of products derived from this edible oil. castor oil’ anomaly amidst numerous vegetable oils to yield diverse polymer types as polyurethanes, polyesters and poly-amides is greatly attributed to its constituent fatty acid, ricinoleate. From the days of its discovery, chemical exploitation over this substance in the industrial world is never ending to either produce new or polymers with improved functional properties.

To elucidate the comment, German polymer firm, BASF has made an alliance with Ford to supply with polyurethanes derived from castor oil for its automobile panels. Reports from the German manufacturer claim that their bio-product in addition to sustainability and GHG reductions offers its clients with tensile strength, softness and fascinating gesture in the instrumental panels of the vehicle. Ford’ advanced product development engineer also appreciated castor oil for its role in vehicle craftsmanship, mitigation of petrochemical usage and introduction of product novelty to their North American customers.

For reference: http://www.polyurethanes.basf.com/pu/KUInternet/KU/en_GB/content/intranews/News_2011/First_Castor_Oil_Based_Foam_in_the_2012_Focus

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Anti-cancer activity from new-world ricins

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Biological systems have a complex chemistry which tend to exhibit functions under conditions of demand and proteins are one such prime classes of bio-molecules, persisting in organisms with a tremendous degree of diversity in their constituent composition and functions.Characterization of distinct candidates of proteins for functional vitality is a consensus process, independent of organism and has been followed for Castor here in the context of functional evaluation of strange variants of toxin,ricin and agglutinin in bio-medicine.

Ricin protein is complex protein with well defined lethal functional activity in human cells but its variation inside the castor plant and populations has not been elucidated extensively either on materialistic or functional basis which triggered researchers from Taiwan to initiate freak identification of ricin protein and related toxins from castor seed,richest source of castor toxins.To address this question,they adopted a protein fractionation chromatographic and electrophoresis techniques to resolve  multiple variants of ricin and evaluating the activity of purified, anomalous forms.The results indicated three principal isoforms of ricin(A,B,C) and an agglutinin, in which toxic activity was seen to a maximum level from ricin A upon oral feeding of it in mice and further observation from them revealed that the concerned protein isolate turned out to a novel member.The scientists subsequently subjected it to display its impact against tumour cells and noticed cell division inhibitory activity which was also selective and differential in mode of action to diseased cells.

It is an exciting study to see as the protein chemists followed an elegant and lucid experimental design but ended up with a potent toxin coupled to anti-tumor activity.However the thing that is to be monitored is the contrasting functional behaviour of this new toxin between an intact organism and a cancer cell line which obviously demands for a proper bio-safety evaluation to scale up the promotion of this toxin (declared as a lectin as per authour’s interpretations) for any disease management actions in humans.

For reference: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0041010186901005

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Castor oil targetting mosquito larvae

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The castor oil plant, which is used to make laxatives, now possibly holds the key to controlling the mosquito menace in a ‘green’ way.

A study conducted by the department of zoonosis at Haffkine Institute for Training, Research and Testing, India, has revealed that castor oil can be used to kill mosquito larvae.

In laboratory tests, the castor seed oil extract was able to kill 50% of the larvae in 24 hours.

“Among the various herbal plants that we tested, the oil extract from the seed of the castor plant showed the best results for larvicidal [killing larvae] activity as well as inhibiting growth of Aedes aegypti mosquito larvae,” said Dr Saroj Bapna, scientific officer of the department.

Read More: http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Castor-oil-can-take-sting-out-of-mosquito-menace/Article1-715045.aspx

 

Hidden diversity in castor expression genetics

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Castor plant is a complex and evolved biological system which can be defined by its series of complex expressions emerged in the life cycle.An universal observation of them reveal us a fact that the traits are expressed with temporal control and found to coupled to pre-programmed genetics.As the phenomena have been monitored skillfully by intellectual minds associated with castor, the complete knowledge pertaining to genetics of them stood nascent for subsequent improvement and other sort of modifications in castor to suit the demands of humans.The condition is now approaching violation with advent and progression in molecular plant genetics which permitted scientists to overcome the seen limitations in castor plant expressions independent of their level.

Research study discussed in this blog concentrates on molecular profiling of temporal  genes implicated to seed germination and leaf development.It is convenient to differenciate these two phenotypic traits which enabled biologists to expect a great degree of linked gene expression diversity.The scientists followed fingerprinting analysis in partially representative genetic libraries of two concerned castor subjects, made in microbes and they employed differential multiple, molecular probes hybridization technique for the selection of unique genes contributing to the traits of study.To their surprise,the extent of polymorphism in genes and their pattern of expression in castor from two of its component systems was something significant and anomalous,  thus demanding for additional research efforts to have an exact understanding.It is a good proof and initiative action  in the industrially respected agricultural crop, castor.

For reference: http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/108/3/1141.short

Emergence of viral pathogens in host castor

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Castor plant is well known to be fairly resistant to biotic stress under the field conditions except for some notorious pests and microbial pathogens.Nevertheless,this condition cannot be taken as a constant phenomenon in castor life cycle since the pathogen-host in interaction in any known biological species is continuous and will selectively generate wavy non-overlapped advantage for one of the two colliding biological systems over an irregular intervals of time and the outcome of which would be co-evolution of both or extinction of either one of the factors.To practically realize this concept, castor plant of wild types have been chosen as a model system in an unusual way after an observation of disease symptoms witnessed in the concerned subjects in Europe.

Scientists from Italy have followed initially an experimental design called “Koch’s Postulates” to confirm that the disease was due to a microbial pathogen and further made extensions in their experimental investigation by molecular probes.They used techniques, PCR and dot blot to precisely detect the nature of pathogen and observed the virulent factor to be a  virus.  Specifically, the researchers categorized it as Olive Latent Virus 2(OLV2) and found to be a closest relative of type strain OLV 1,infecting tobacco.

Co-evolution of host-pathogen is well noticed in this case following the discovery of a novel viral pathogen in a host what is considered to be resistant.Another interesting aspect is also to be watched with respect to the timely disease observation made by phyto-pathologists on the wild castor plants whose frequency in the natural ecosystem is normally limited.The experimental approach is also relatively robust enough to permit an unambiguous identification of an evolving pathogen.Efforts are still required to better the understand the pathogen behaviour and its transmission media for formulation of effective disease management procedures in agricultural cultivars in a pre-determined way.

For reference: http://www.sipav.org/main/jpp/volumes/0202/020208.pdf