M.A. Jinnah: The Outside View by Dr M. Reza Kazimi (Book Reviews)

Keeping track with the growing literature on Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his role in the modern Indian politics, may be an interesting and stimulating undertaking for the students of history. One thing is quite obvious that with the passage of time both in Pakistan and India—more so in the latter than in the former—the official historiography is being surpassed by historians aspiring to look into the partition afresh. The official historiographies in India and Pakistan had remained in vogue, in both countries, particularly during the initial two decades. This may be attributed to the momentum of respective Muslim and the Indian nationalist movements, which dominated the intellectual horizon in the two countries after independence. The postcolonial states in the two countries also relied heavily on their respective pre-partition nationalist assertions to construct their ideological edifices while aspiring to legitimize the state authorities. It was during the 1970s, that historians amassed courage to question some of the logical inconsistencies enwrapped in the official nationalist historical claims. With this there arose the urge to look into the historical roles of some of the most prominent political figures of pre-partition era. Thus while on the one hand Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, etc, came under new searchlights, on the other, Jinnah’s role was revisited with fresh and objective outlook. The new versions were also subjected to questions and historians have since been involved in responding to points raised by each other.

Isolation and Mutagenesis of a Bacterial Strain for Enhanced Production and Characterization of Organophosphate Hydrolase

Organophosphate pesticides are of common interest due to increased envionmenal contamination. Such agents cause several undesired and un-solved problems in non-target species. The enzyme organophosphate hydrolase (OPH) producing bacterial strain Brevibacillus parabrevis SR2729 (B. parabrevis SR2729) was isolated from soil contaminated with chlorpyrifos. Brevibacillus parabrevis SR2729 was subjected to strain improvement by physical and chemical mutagenesis; where two strains B. parabrevis SR2729-A and B. parabrevis SR2729-B were selected after classical screening through Triton-x-100 and 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol. The mutant derived strains Brevibacillus parabrevis SR2729-A and Brevibacillus parabrevis SR2729-B showed 229 and 240 % greater OPH production as compared to parental strain. The optimum levels of six variables (pH, temperature, incubation time, carbon source, nitrogen source and pesticide concentration) were obtained after statistical analysis by RSM. After process optimization, the activities of OPH from B. parabrevis SR2729-A and B. parabrevis SR2729-B were 195 and 178 % greater than OPH from parental strain B. parabrevis SR2729. The specific activity for purified enzyme was observed to be 935, 1521 1911 U mg-1 from parental and mutant derived strains B. parabrevis SR2729-A and B. parabrevis SR2729-B, respectively. After kinetic and thermodynamic analysis, the enzyme from mutant derived strains was observed to be more suitable for utilizing chlorpyrifos as substrate, with higher thermostability as compared to the enzyme from parental strain. The molecular weight of OPH enzymes from parental and mutant derived strains were 37 kDa. In soil, the OPH from mutant derived strains B. parabrevis SR2729-A and B. parabrevis SR2729-B showed 206 and 208 % greater degradation of chlorpyrifos as compared to parental strain. The enzyme from mutant derived strains B. parabrevis SR2729-A and B. parabrevis SR2729-B degraded 28 and 65 % greater insecticide in water compared to enzyme from parental strain. In conclusion, the strain improvement by physical and chemical mutagenesis resulted in the selection of potential mutant derived strains which were more significant agents for the degradation of chlorpyrifos in soil and water samples.