First report of isolation of maleamic acid from natural source Polygonatum cirrhifolium—A potential chemical marker for identification

Polygonatum cirrhifolium (Meda) plant is being used in number of rejuvenating Ayurvedic formulations. Ever rising demands, lack of natural sources, and insufficient quantity, to meet the requirements of market, the raw material has led toward the use of official substitutes recommended by the Department of AYUSH that has further encouraged manufacturers for adulteration of formulations by other substandard/spurious raw drugs. Literature reveals that more than 60% Ayurvedic parameters as well as pharmacological actions of Ashtawarga plants do not match with their substitutes leading to reduced efficacy of the drugs along with loss of faith for use of herbal drugs. Consumers are forced to pay for the material which has never been used for high-cost claimed formulation. The situation is being exploited by manufacturers because regulatory authorities lack the tools (marker compound) needed for identification of authentic plant. Methanolic extract of rhizomes of plant was subjected to column chromatography. Isolated compound has been characterized as (Z)-4-amino-4-oxobut-2-enoic acid (maleamic acid/maleamate/maleic monoamide/maleic acid monoamide) by chemical test, melting point, IR/NMR/mass/UV spectral analysis. It is the first report in Polygonatum genus and can be used as a marker for identification of the plant in market formulations.     

Alum as an efficient catalyst for the multicomponent synthesis of functionalized piperidines

An effective approach to the synthesis of functionalized piperidines via a one-pot multicomponent reaction of aniline, β-ketoester and aldehyde in the presence of alum as an efficient catalyst has been reported. The present procedure offers advantages such as simple workup, short reaction time and offers rapid access to a variety of functionalized piperidines.     

Synthesis and antimicrobial evaluation of novel 3-(arylideneamino)-3a,8a-dihydroxy-1,3,3a,8a-tetrahydroindeno[1,2-d]imidazole-2,8-diones and their 2-thioxo analogues

The preparation of some novel 3-(arylideneamino)-3a,8a-dihydroxy-1,3,3a,8a-tetrahydroindeno[1,2-d]imidazole-2,8-diones 8(i–xiv) and 3-(arylideneamino)-3a,8a-dihydroxy-2-thioxo-1,3,3a,8a-tetrahydroindeno[1,2-d]imidazol-8(2H)-ones 9(i–xiv) have been reported through one-pot catalyst-free reaction of aldehydes, semicarbazide hydrochloride/thiosemicarbazide with ninhydrin. All the synthesized compounds have been screened for antimicrobial activity and some of them were observed to possess broad spectrum antibacterial potential as well as significant antagonistic potential against fungal pathogens.     

A combined treatment of hydration and dynamical effects for the modeling of host–guest binding thermodynamics: the SAMPL5 blinded challenge

As part of the SAMPL5 blinded experiment, we computed the absolute binding free energies of 22 host–guest complexes employing a novel approach based on the BEDAM single-decoupling alchemical free energy protocol with parallel replica exchange conformational sampling and the AGBNP2 implicit solvation model specifically customized to treat the effect of water displacement as modeled by the Hydration Site Analysis method with explicit solvation. Initial predictions were affected by the lack of treatment of ionic charge screening, which is very significant for these highly charged hosts, and resulted in poor relative ranking of negatively versus positively charged guests. Binding free energies obtained with Debye–Hückel treatment of salt effects were in good agreement with experimental measurements. Water displacement effects contributed favorably and very significantly to the observed binding affinities; without it, the modeling predictions would have grossly underestimated binding. The work validates the implicit/explicit solvation approach employed here and it shows that comprehensive physical models can be effective at predicting binding affinities of molecular complexes requiring accurate treatment of conformational dynamics and hydration.     

QUARTIC CONVEX TYPE PIECEWISE POLYNOMIAL

In the present paper we consider quartic piecewise polynomial for approximation to the function f ∈ C 2 [0, 1]. A convex type condition has been imposed in the partition so that the matrix involved for the computation of pp functions is of lower band. This reduces the computation for constructions of the pp functions for the approximation.