Nicotiana

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, tobacco is any plant of the genus Nicotiana; especially: an annual South American herb (N. tabacum) cultivated for its leaves. With the leaves from the tobacco which was cultivated, it is then used to process for the use of smoking, chewing or as snuff. The breathing of tobacco smoke can be harmful and of the more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 250 are known to be harmful and also having caner causing agents. A leading cause of…

“Tobacco” means any Nicotiana tabacum or Nicotiana rustica plant or any other related plants or its leaf or crop, root, branch or any part of it.(Tobacco Products Usage Control Act,2005) Berry and Porter (1986) in their study argued that there is no essential difference between the use…

Bioinformatics is a study that focuses on the collection and analysis of biological information using information from sequences of DNA, RNA, and proteins. This field focuses on how to make predictions about biological systems and analyze data to provide more insight on how living organisms function and how its genome relates to its biology. Following the determination of the insulin sequence, Frederick Sanger realized that manually comparing several sequences was impractical (Moody 2004)).…

One early attempt to colonize America killed over 430 people, so how did they survive? In the spring of 1607, three ships sailed from England filled with passengers whose goals were to find gold in the New World. Little did they know, those hopes were soon to be destroyed. The thought of this New World was appealing to most but many soon after would change their decision to come. During the first three years about eight percent of the colonists had died. But what killed them? On the peninsula…

complicated and involves plants, insects, parasitoids and humans. The tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta) feeds on various species of the Solanale order which includes eggplants, potatoes, peppers, nightshades, tomatoes, petunias and of course, tobacco (Nicotiana attenuate). The larvae are defoliators and eat almost all of the leaves on a plant including fruit and blossoms. The larvae fill a different niche from their adult counterparts which feed on nectar. However, 70%-90% of foliage consumption…

annually. By the mid-2020s, that figure will increase to about 10 million a year, with most of the deaths occurring in developing countries” (Yach, & Wipfli, (2006), p.465). Tobacco is highly addictive and is used all over the world. It is a plant Nicotiana tabacum which uses the leaves for chewing tobacco, ground to make snuff, and for smoking such as cigars, pipes and cigarettes. In our reading, we find that the American Indians were already using tobacco. John Rolfe was one of the new…

Boechera stricta Boechera stricta, belongs to mustard family Brassicaceae. It is restricted to higher elevations and faces both abiotic (e.g. drought) and biotic stressors (e.g. herbivore) at low elevation range limits (Rushworth et al. 2011). For understanding genetic controls on ecologically, these species are very important which provide further understanding of underlying mechanisms in natural populations as compared to artificial lab experiments. Boechera stricta is widely distributed in…

Introduction Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) is the key enzyme for carbon fixation and four different holoenzyme form of Rubisco are found in different organisms (Tabita et al., 1999; Tabita et al., 2007). Most abundant Rubisco forms 1 consist of eight large subunits and eight small subunits are found in algae, cyanobacteria and higher plants (Shively et al., 1973). The multiple nuclear gene encoding small subunits of Rubisco is called rbcS. rbcS exists only in Rubisco…

Three years after Thevet wrote about his journey, Jean Nicot, French ambassador to the Portuguese King, brought tobacco seeds to France when he met a Flemish mercantile on his way to Portugal (“The Early History” 329). Tobacco was gained the name nicotiana much to the ire of Thevet, for he complained that Nicot never went to the Americas and was not the first to bring a tobacco plant to France (“The Early History” 329). While Thevet wrote about his anger for tobacco’s name, he also denied that…

Diagnosis of a chronic illness brings about a wide array of emotions from the individual who will now be tasked with managing the symptoms of this disease without a cure. Epilepsy is a chronic illness characterized by frequent seizure activity; individuals diagnosed with epilepsy have excessive, uncontrolled, electrical discharge of neurons within the brain that can cause temporary loss of consciousness, jerking, muscle rigidity, automatisms, and even complete loss of muscle tone. There exist…