Importance of Evidence of DNA in Perspective of Islamic Jurisprudence

DNA or Genetic fingerprinting technology is the topic of the day. It has revolutionized the forensic science. Islamic Jurisprudence has its own procedure and priorities of evidences, which mainly depend upon eyewitness, personal evidence and testimony. It was introduced in 1984. It is used in the identification of parentage, forensic sciences, treatment and diagnosis of diseases. The sequence of base pairs varies from person to person and the relativity of persons is identified by identifying the matching of base pairs. The Contemporary International Institutions of Collective Ijtih฀d have launched heavy discussions on this new evidence and reviewed relevant serious law making efforts based on it, which results in very valuable Fat฀w฀ and resolutions, regarding the use of DNA techniques, as evidence in criminal cases and its limitations and scope in Islamic Jurisprudence. This article discusses and concludes that the genetic fingerprinting technique should be used for the attestation of the cases related to it, along with the traditional way to acquire evidences, even though, it does not have self-sustaining priority, but depends upon other evidences for making a judicial verdict. Like other forensic evidences, it has also errors and intervening factors that limit its accuracy. Therefore, the decisions of crimes liable to ฀ud฀d, Qi฀฀฀ and Diyyat should not depend only upon DNA fingerprinting. Thus, we can say that in the absence of stipulated evidences, rebuking punishment may be sentenced on the basis the evidence of DNA.

Investigation of Active Site of Osrglpi. a Germin-Like Superoxide Dismuatse

Germin-like proteins are glycosylated proteins that are highly diverse in plant kingdom. Most of the germin-like proteins show superoxide dismutase activity. Superoxide dismutase converts superoxide anion into molecular oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. Identification of catalytic residues is an important step for understanding the mechanism of enzyme catalyzed reactions. Previously OsRGLP1 gene and cDNA were isolated from the roots of Oryza sativa and, under CaMV35S promoter, cDNA has been heterologously expressed in tobacco. In transgenic tobacco plants, OsRGLP1 seems to show SOD activity. Present study was aimed to determine the active site of OsRGLP1. Three dimensional structure and residues involved in metal ion and substrate binding were predicted using bioinformatics tools. Three histidines and one glutamate were predicted to play an important role in metal ion binding and Asparagine to Alanine mutation was predicted to be responsible for different substrate specificity of germin and germin-like proteins. These residues were then mutated with other selected residues by site directed mutagenesis to confirm these predictions. In present study out of many designed mutants, four loss of function mutants were further studied by performing transient transformation of tobacco plants. These transgenic plants were used as source of native and mutant proteins for SOD activity assay to find the effect of mutations on SOD activity. Results of SOD assay showed approximately complete loss of activity in all mutant proteins validating the importance of these residues in SOD activity of OsRGLP1 protein. As these residues are involved in metal ion binding so present study also provide some insight into mechanism of action of OsRGLP1 indicating OsRGLP1 indicating the role of metal ion in its activity.