Thermostable Vaccines: Past, Present and Future Perspectives Thermostable Vaccines

Vaccines stability has a major role in the success of immunization programs and saves millions of lives every year. To stabilize vaccines cold chains are developed for storage and transport, as efficiency of vaccines is hampered if they are not kept under proper temperature. Aluminum is used for making vaccine thermostable. The development of vaccine formulation is a critical part of overall development cycle of approving, testing and producing new vaccines. However, Liquid vaccine formulation is still preferred over dry formulation because of ease in using, packaging and manufacturing. Other approaches have been used to make vaccine thermostable. This study demonstrates those processes, used to develop thermo-sensitive vaccines into thermostable vaccine and also describes vaccine formulation designing and use of heat shock protein including mHSP70 and mHSP65 to generate innate and adaptive immune response.

Seasonal Biodiversity of Braconidae Hymenoptera in Citrus Orchards of Sargodha, Pakistan

Citrus is one of the important fruit grown in Punjab, particularly in Sargodha region. Its export plays a vital role in Pakistan‟s economy. However it is adeversely affected by many biotic and abiotic factors. Among biotic factors, a large number of insect pests attack on citrus crop even before flowering to fruit formation which ultimately results in decreased fruit production and poor juice contents. A large number of insecticides are used to control citrus insect pests but their indiscriminate use causes environmental pollution, primary pest outbreak, secondary pest resurgence and development of resistance against insecticides. Therefore, to overcome the ill-effects of insecticides, there is a need to design a widespread integrated pest management strategy. In nature, different natural enemies play a vital role in the reduction of citrus insect pest‟s population. Natural enemies such as predators, parasitoids and pathogens are used for biological control of different insect pests. Several natural enemies attack on various prey or host species while few are host specific such as parasitoids. Most of the parasitoids belong to family Braconidae of order Hymenoptera which contains large number of parasitoid species that successfully control several important plant pests. This family comprises of 44-47 subfamilies and about 1000 genera with over 40,000 species that are widely distributed all over the world. Prevalence of more number of species in district Sargodha provided us basic information about the efficiency of parasitoids as biocontrol agent. In this study, braconids fauna from different localities of Sargodha region were explored, with particular reference to citrus orchards. For this purpose different kinnow orchards in selected localities were selected for the collection of parasitoids and their mummies. The parasitoids were identified under the microscope using taxonomic keys. Confusing species of parasitoids were further identified by their DNA sequences. Diversity index (Simpson) method was used to find the most prevalent species in each tehsil of district Sargodha.