Daily Prelims Notes 4 June 2024

Daily Prelims Notes

4 June 2024

1. ICMR seeks to provide oral formulation of hydroxyurea to treat sickle cell disease in children

Sub: Science and tech

Sec: Health

ICMR’s Call for Expressions of Interest (EoI):

• Purpose: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is seeking Expressions of Interest (EoI) from eligible organisations for the joint development and commercialisation of low-dose or paediatric oral formulation of “hydroxyurea” to treat sickle cell disease (SCD) in India.

Challenges in children’s dosage of hydroxyurea:

• Hydroxyurea is an effective treatment for SCD and thalassemia but currently only available in high doses.
• Most pharmaceutical companies in India offer hydroxyurea in 500 mg capsules or 200 mg tablets.
• The prescribed dose for children is 10-15 mg per kilogram of body weight after two years of age.
• There is a lack of hydroxyurea in suspension form, which is critical for paediatric patients.
• Breaking down high-dose tablets or capsules for children’s use is cumbersome and risks inaccurate dosing, affecting treatment efficacy.
• Due to the lack of paediatric doses and fear of toxicity, healthcare providers only initiate hydroxyurea therapy for symptomatic children as per the National Health Mission’s guidelines.

Proposed Solution:

• The availability of paediatric formulation would facilitate better dose titration and reduce dose-related side effects.
• ICMR is open to exclusive or non-exclusive agreements with manufacturing companies for the development and commercialisation of paediatric oral formulations of hydroxyurea for SCD.

Sickle cell disease (SCD):

• Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is an inherited haemoglobin disorder characterised by a genetic mutation that causes red blood cells (RBCs) to assume a sickle or crescent shape rather than their normal round shape.
• This abnormality in RBCs results in increased rigidity, impairing their ability to circulate effectively throughout the body. Consequently, individuals with SCD often experience complications such as anaemia, organ damage, recurrent and severe pain episodes, and a shortened lifespan.
• Sickle cell disease is a common monogenic disorder of haemoglobin.
• India has the highest prevalence of SCD in South Asia, with over 20 million affected individuals.
• As per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, marginalised tribal populations are most vulnerable to SCD.
• Symptoms: Symptoms of sickle cell disease can vary, but some common symptoms are-
  • Chronic anaemia which leads to fatigue, weakness, and paleness.
  • Painful episodes (also known as sickle cell crisis) cause sudden and intense pain in the bones, chest, back, arms, and legs.
  • Delayed growth and puberty.
• Treatment Processes:
  • Blood Transfusions: These can help relieve anaemia and reduce the risk of pain crises.
  • Hydroxyurea: This medication can help reduce the frequency of painful episodes and prevent some of the disease’s long-term complications.
  • Gene Therapy: It can also be treated by bone marrow or stem cell transplantation by methods like Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR).

National Mission to Eliminate SCD 2047:

• There is a need for a paediatric formulation of hydroxyurea in line with the National Mission to eliminate SCD by 2047.
• Under the Sickle Cell Anaemia Mission, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is developing gene-editing therapies for SCD.

Source: TH

2. Remove claim of ‘100% fruit juice’ from label and ads, FSSAI directs food businesses

Sub: Polity

Sec: National Body

FSSAI’s directive to Food Business Operators (FBOs):

• The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued a directive mandating all Food Business Operators (FBOs) to remove any claim of ‘100% fruit juice’ from the labels and advertisements of reconstituted fruit juices with immediate effect.

Details of the directive:

• All the FBOs have also been instructed to exhaust all existing pre-printed packaging materials before September 1.
• FBOs have been told to comply with the standards for fruit juices as specified under sub-regulation 2.3.6 of the Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards & Food Additives) Regulation, 2011.
  • This regulation states that products covered by this standard must be labelled in accordance with the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020.
  • Specifically, in the ingredient list, the word “reconstituted” must be mentioned against the name of the juice that is reconstituted from the concentrate.
  • Additionally, if added nutritive sweeteners exceed 15 gm/kg, the product must be labelled as ‘Sweetened juice’.
• Cause for issuing directives:
  • FSSAI has noticed that several FBOs have been inaccurately marketing various types of reconstituted fruit juices by claiming them to be 100 per cent fruit juices.
  • Upon thorough examination, FSSAI has concluded that according to the Food Safety and Standards (Advertising and Claims) Regulations, 2018, there is no provision for making a ‘100%’ claim.
  • Such claims are misleading, particularly under conditions where the major ingredient of the fruit juice is water and the primary ingredient, for which the claim is made, is present only in limited concentrations, or when the fruit juice is reconstituted using water and fruit concentrates or pulp.

Reconstituted fruit juice:

• Reconstituted fruit juices are those products in which a fruit juice concentrate is mixed with water to create the final product. A large number of commercially available fruit juices fall in this category.

About FSSAI:

• It is an autonomous body established under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
• The FSSAI was established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which is a consolidating statute related to food safety and regulation in India.
• Vision: Build a new India by enabling citizens to have safe and nutritious food, prevent diseases, and lead a healthy and happy life.
• Mission: Set globally benchmarked standards for food, encourage and ensure that food businesses adhere to these standards, adopt good manufacturing and hygiene practices, and ultimately enable citizens to access safe and right food.
• Functions of FSSAI:
  • FSSAI is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety.
  • It lays down standards and guidelines in relation to articles of food and provides for licensing, registration, and accreditation for food business operators.
  • Anyone selling or importing food in India needs a food licence issued by FSSAI.
  • FSSAI also directly monitors compliance of food regulations, especially in the area of food imports to India.
  • FSSAI officers carry out food import controls and ensure that the contain no harmful ingredients. To do this, they send selected test products from the import to accredited laboratories for inspection.
  • The FSSAI is also responsible for the accreditation of food testing laboratories throughout India.
  • The FSSAI is responsible for the Food Certification in India.
  • It is mandated to specify systems for enforcing its standards, for accreditation of certification systems, and for certification of food safety management systems for food businesses.

3. Structure of FSSAI

• Composition: Comprises a Chairperson and 22 members, with one-third being women.
• Appointment: The Chairperson is appointed by the Central Government.
• Support Structure: Assisted by Scientific Committees, Panels, and the Central Advisory Committee.
• Enforcement: Primarily enforced by State Food Safety Commissioners.

Initiatives by FSSAI

• Heart Attack Rewind: Campaign to eliminate trans-fat in India by 2022.
• FSSAI-CHIFSS: Collaboration for food safety between industry, scientific community, and academia.
• State Food Safety Index (SFSI): Measures state performance on food safety parameters.
• Eat Right India Movement: Aims to transform India’s food system for safe, healthy, and sustainable food.
• Eat Right Station Certification: Certification for railway stations providing safe and wholesome food.

Source: TH

3. ‘Green-beard’ genes could explain how altruism arose in nature

Sub: Science and tech

Sec: Health

Context: msp

• Scientists have gained valuable new insights into natural altruism by studying the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.

What is Altruism in animals?

• Altruism in animals describes a range of behaviors performed by animals that may be to their own disadvantage but which benefit others. 
• The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring.
• Altruism is widespread in nature.
• Worker honey bees devote their entire life to foraging and caring for their sister, the queen, and her offspring, but do not themselves reproduce.
• In widow spiders, a male allows a female fertilized by him to eat him, and thus nourish herself and her offspring.
• A meerkat, a mongoose found in Africa, assumes the role of a sentinel, perching itself on a mound or rock, keeping a lookout for predators, instead of foraging for food, while the rest of the clan is feeding. If a predator is sighted, it alerts the others.

How can the emergence of altruism in all these diverse forms be explained?

• The question can be answered from the  studies of a simpler organism that has been easier for researchers to study: the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. 
• Studies say that, if a gene makes a worker bee altruistic, it also helps the copy of the gene in the queen and her offspring to be passed on to the next generation, even if the worker herself does not reproduce.
• ‘Green-beard’ genes allow the individuals bearing them to recognise and preferentially cooperate with each other.
• A green-beard gene could provoke individuals to behave harmfully towards those carrying a different version of the gene.
• Green-beard genes encode some kind of tag that helps the genome to know their identity (i.e. self-recognition).

About Dictyostelium discoideum:

• Dictyostelium discoideum is a free-living, fast-growing, unicellular amoeba. In the wild, it feeds on bacteria that grow on decaying vegetation.
• Dictyostelium discoideum is a species of soil-dwelling amoeba belonging to the phylum Amoebozoa, infraphylum Mycetozoa.
• Commonly referred to as slime mold, D. discoideum is a eukaryote that transitions from a collection of unicellular amoebae into a multicellular slug and then into a fruiting body within its lifetime.
• About 20% of the amoebae in an aggregate altruistically sacrifice themselves to form the stalk. 
• The remaining 80% become the spores.

How does D. discoideum ensure that cheaters do not prosper?

• Two genes in the D. discoideum genome called tgrB1 and tgrC1, displayed all the properties one would expect in a green-beard gene.
• The tgrB1 and tgrC1 genes are located next to each other in the D. discoideum genome, and are expressed together
• They contain information for cells to make two cell surface proteins called TgrB1 and TgrC1. 
• The TgrB1 protein on one cell binds to the TgrC1 protein on another.  
• If the binding is strong, the TgrB1 protein is activated, and confers altruistic behavior – manifesting as the amoeba’s willingness to form the stalk.
• The binding between the TgrB1 and the TgrC1 proteins of cells of the same strain is strong, and leads to self-recognition and cell-cell cooperation. 
• The tgrB1 and tgrC1 genes are also very polymorphic: within the same population of D. discoideum amoebae, they have multiple variants. 
• The researchers were able to correlate differences in the tgr gene sequences between two strains to the efficiency with which their cells segregated from each other in mixed aggregates and formed separate fruiting bodies.
• When the binding of TgrB1 and TgrC1 proteins across the cells of diverged strains was weak, TgrB1 failed to be activated, and the cells split away from each other instead of cooperating.
• When the researchers deleted the tgrB1 gene but left the tgrC1 gene intact, the amoeba did not cheat on ‘non-self’ amoebae that carried a different tgrC1.
• Instead, it cheated those with the same tgrC1 variant as itself — i.e. its kin. Every family has its black sheep!

4. ISRO develops new PraVaHa software for aerodynamic design

Sub: Science and tech

Sec: Space sector

• The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software “Parallel RANS Solver for Aerospace Vehicle Aero-thermo-dynamic Analysis” (PraVaHa) is developed in VSSC to simulate external and internal flows on launch vehicles, winged & nonwinged re-entry vehicles.
• Initial aerodynamic design studies for launch vehicles demand evaluation of a large number of configurations.
• Any aerospace vehicle while moving through the earth’s atmosphere during ‘launch’ or ‘reentry’ is subjected to severe aerodynamic and aerothermal loads in terms of external pressure and heat flux.
• Understanding the ‘airflow’ around aircraft, rocket bodies, or Crew Module [CM] during earth re-entry is essential to design the shape, structure, and Thermal Protection System [TPS] requirements for these bodies. The unsteady part of aerodynamics contributes to serious flow issues around such rocket bodies and creates significant acoustic noise during the mission. Computational Fluid Dynamics [CFD] is one such tool to predict the aerodynamic and aerothermal loads which solve numerically the equations of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy along with the equation of state.
• Presently, CFD is matured enough in terms of its accurate prediction capability for complex aerodynamic flows, as well as faster simulation turnaround time on High-Performance Computing Clusters. This makes it handy for the design and characterization of many initial designs so that a few optimum configurations can be selected for detailed evaluation.
• PraVaHa has been used extensively in the Gaganyaan program for aerodynamic analysis of human-rated launch vehicles, viz, HLVM3, Crew Escape System [CES], and Crew Module [CM]. It is designed to make use of CPU as well as GPU architecture of available and upcoming supercomputing facilities. The software framework is quite flexible & secure enough, to have collaborative development with academic institutes and government labs.
• Currently, the PraVaHa code is operational to simulate airflow for Perfect Gas & Real Gas conditions. Validations of the code are underway for simulating the effect of chemical reactions that occur during air dissociation upon ‘earth re-entry’ and ‘combustion’ as in scramjet vehicles.
• PraVaHa soon will replace most of the CFD simulations for aero characterization, which is currently being carried out using commercial software. This indigenous software is going to help academia and other institutions, engaged in the design of missiles/aircraft/rockets, to find solutions to complex aerodynamic problems. By making this product available to larger sections of society, ISRO aspires to lend a helping hand, to move forward in achieving the stated goal of Atmanirbhar India.