The Genesis of Shi’ism in Islam

Like other major religions of the world, sectarian division took place in Islam too. The major cause of this sectarian division was political in its nature rather than religious. Immediately after the demise of the Holy Prophet (SAW), believers were divided over the question of succession to the Prophet (SAW) which later on culminated in the shape of two sectarian factions i.e. Sunni and Shi‘ah. The present paper will give a complete account of the genesis of Islamic sects including the events that directly intensified shi’ism  in Islam.

Molecular Characterization of Blb Resistant Rice Germplasm

Bacterial Leaf Blight (BLB) of rice is one of the major bottlenecks that impede rice production across the globe. Development of resistant rice varieties and pathogen starvation, by blocking its nutrient source, are the promising strategies to effectively combat with this disease. In one of the current studies, BLB resistant Super Basmati introgressed lines (SBILs), were both genotypically and phenotypically characterized. Genotypic characterization indicated that, in terms of different gene combinations, Xa4 and Xa21 were found in 7 SBILs, xa5 and Xa21 in 5 SBILs and all three resistance genes were introgressed in 2 SBILs only. Recovery of recurrent parent genome, by 119 polymorphic SSR markers, ranged from 90.04% to 99.7 % while it ranged from 64.76 % to 94.83 % when analyzed using 1725 polymorphic SNP markers. Pathotyping results revealed that three Xoo strains i.e. PXO99, PXO341, PXO349, and PXO349 were the most virulent against all 25 SBILs. Both genotypic and phenotypic evaluation have shown that majority of SBILs have recovered three Basmati grain quality traits i.e. aroma, grain shape and amylose in them. In susceptible rice host, Xoo transcription activator like effector (TALe) binds with effector binding element (EBE) in the promoter of OsSWEET genes. Any alteration in the target promoter sequence greatly reduces binding affinity of TALe. Therefore, in one of the present studies, 3K SNP seek database was mined, in silico, to identify rice lines that contain SNP/InDels at EBE in the promoter of OsSWEET13 and OsSWEET14. We identified two aus rice lines (Ejali and Khama1183) with 2 base pairs deletions and a single nucleotide substitution at EBE in the promoter of OsSWEET13 and OsSWEET14 respectively. Detected natural variations in Ejali and Khama1183 prevented the induction of both OsSWEET13 and OsSWEET14. An RNA sequencing based study was also conducted to unveil the alternate nutrient sources, primary/secondary metabolic pathways targeted by highly adaptable, mutated Xoo strain in the presence a major resistance gene. We identified a total of 301 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in IRBB4 infected with WTPXO61 and ΔPXO61. In depth analysis of identified DEGs, using MapMan, revealed that genes specifically associated with the synthesis of Trehalose were strongly induced at early and late stages of infection. Hence, to cope up with the ever evolving pathogen, we need to further diversify and combine different resistance strategies in susceptible rice germplasm to gain broad scale, region specific, durable resistance against BLB.