اسلام اور مغرب: ڈاکٹر محمود احمد غازی کے افکار کا خصوصی مطالعہ

The comparative study of civilizations, their conflicts, clashes and their harmony are the significant issues of this era. It's a reality that in the present clash of civilizations, Islam is being pushed to a tight corner. The Islamic world today is facing severe challenges and odd circumstances in maintaining their vital values and re-establishing their identity and gaining their due place in the modern world because some of the western thinkers believe that after demolishing the Soviet Union, their next encounter would be with the ideology of Islam. In this situation, the comparison of civilizations and their comprehension has acquired a significant place and it is necessary to highlight the essential elements of various civilizations in such a way that they can sustain their individuality and the misunderstandings among them may be removed to create a peaceful atmosphere which is based on love, mutual tolerance, co-existence and  the supremacy of basic human rights so that the world may return to the merger of various civilizations and harmony among different religions. Allama Iqbal is the thinker who has shown extraordinary depth in his approach towards the study of Islam and the western world, highlighting their differences and the traditions, points and levels of their merger and harmony with a balanced and impartial approach. It's necessary to comprehend Iqbal's ideas keeping in view the history of Islam and the western world, the current demands of the present age and considering organized, solid, argumentative analysis in an objective way  revealing the soul of Islam and the spirit of the west in context of Iqbal's philosophy so that the modern world can move towards a peaceful and creative situation. Dr. Mehmood Ahmad Ghazi was the realization of Iqbal's dream. He is simultaneously an educationist, a great researcher and an illustrator and interpreter of the Holy Quran and narrator of Hadiths. His personality was equally well versed in Islamic art and learning and all their offshoot disciplines. It's the trait of his personality that in spite of travelling far and wide and having done a vast study, he is not impressed at all except by the ideology of Islam. He has very successfully passed on the ancient heritage to its modern heirs with honesty, skill and sagacity. Here an effort has been made to present a review of his views where he has propounded a critical, analytical and scholarly analysis of the western world.

Molecular Characterization of Polyphenol Oxidase Gene Promoter

Polyphenol oxidases (PPOs) are the nuclear encoded, copper binding enzymes and are ubiquitous in nature. These enzymes are responsible for oxidation of ortho-and para- diphenols to quinones, which are highly reactive. Oxidized phenolic compounds in plant tissues due to PPO activity results is the formation of undesirable browning leading to unwanted color changes in food items during storage and processing which is one of the main causes of quality loss. However, upon damage or injury to plant, phenolic compounds oxidize to polymeric structure in order to protect against insects or micro- organisms. PPO is the source of quinones that limits the accessibility of alkylating dietary proteins to insects and ultimately starvation may happen. PPOs are of significant interest because of their high capacity to oxidize aromatic compounds. They are also suitable for some biotechnological applications in food, medicine, paper and textile industry. PPOs have a wide range of antioxidant activities and supplements with diet play a significant role in health care. Keeping in view the importance of PPOs, a study was carried out to characterize rice PPO promoter (OsPPOP) region at molecular level. The OsPPO promoter region was amplified, cloned and sequenced. Bioinformatics tools based comparative analysis of OsPPO promoter sequence and six other PPO promoter sequences available in Genbank revealed that PPO promoter regions possess common, novel and distinct cis-regulatory elements. The identified cis-regulatory elements have roles in environmental stresses (biotic and abiotic), activation of pathogen related genes and secondary metabolite path ways. Moreover, light responsive elements, pathogen inducible elements and copper binding elements are also present in the promoter region of PPO genes. Maps of cis- regulatory elements were framed manually in order to know the number, density and location of these elements available both on positive and negative strands of PPO promoters analyzed. Further, blast revealed that small regions of 1020 bp OsPPO promoter region have homology at chromosome 2 with the stretch of regions encoding ethylene gene, 3-isopropylmalate dehydratase small subunit and transposons (superfamily of elements Rim2/Hipa) and conserved sequences of CACTA-like family. xxiThen an expression construct was designed for the functional analysis of OsPPO promoter region in transgenic tobacco plant. The expression construct was transformed into tobacco via leaf disc method. Expression was observed in transgenic tobacco by GUS staining. The microscopic analysis revealed that the PPO promoter region is tissue specific and the GUS expression was observed in leaves; leaf veins and leaf petiole, stem; epidermis, vascular bundles, pith, collenchyma, sclerenchyma, xylem and phloem and roots; xylem and phloem. It is being first time reported that OsPPO promoter region is a strong wound inducible promoter. Further, Real-Time PCR study revealed that higher level of OsPPO promoter expression is at lower temperature and with the increase in temperature the expression level gradually decreases. The observed properties of OsPPO promoter can be used for plant transformation related studies as the OsPPO promoter region is plant origin promoter with wound inducible properties and it can also be expressed at higher level in low temperature conditions. Thus, the findings elucidate that OsPPO promoter is an important promoter which can be exploited for crop improvement and plant transformation studies.