Prelim Bits 06-11-2021 | UPSC Daily Current Affairs

Three-step Synthesis Route for Molnupiravir

Researchers have engineered enzymes to enable faster manufacture of antiviral drug molnupiravir.

Molnupiravir is an investigational oral antiviral for treatment of Covid-19, which was originally developed to treat influenza.
Molnupiravir works by causing viruses to make errors when copying their own RNA, introducing mutations that inhibit replication.
Recently, molnupiravir reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 for newly diagnosed, at-risk patients, and that it worked equally well against different SARS-CoV-2 variants.
In the new study, a 3-step synthesis route was developed - from a sugar molecule called ribose - to increase the yield of Molnupiravir.
They identified enzymes or chemical treatments to sequentially add the appropriate chemical groups to ribose to generate the molecule.
For the 2^nd step of the synthesis, the team identified bacterial enzymes that weakly catalyzed the desired reactions.
Using in vitro evolution, they greatly enhanced these enzymes' activities.
This new route, which also included a phosphate recycling strategy, was 70% shorter and had a 7-fold higher overall yield than the original route.

Union Minister of Textiles said that time has come to target 5 times increase in export of Technical Textiles in 3 years.

Technical textiles are textiles materials and products manufactured for non-aesthetic purposes, primarily for technical performance and functional properties.
Depending upon their application areas, Technical Textiles products are divided into 12 broad categories.
- Agrotech, Buildtech, Clothtech, Geotech, Hometech, Indutech, Mobiltech, Meditech, Protech, Sportstech, Oekotech, Packtech.
India shares nearly 6% of world market size of 250 Billion USD.
The growth of Technical Textiles in India has gained momentum in past 5 years, currently growing at 8 % per annum rate. The aim is to hasten this growth to 15-20% range during next 5 years.

Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvIT) of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) attracts marquee institutional investors.

A marquee investor is an investor well known for investing in companies that turn into success stories at a later date.
This person could be either an individual or a corporate/ institutional investor.
The purchase of some company’s shares by such investors gives others the hope that these companies would turn out to be profitable investments for them too.
While this can prove to be true in many cases, it is not a rule, because no investor can dictate future business and economic events.
So, one should not just look at the presence of marquee investors, but the potential of those companies and then invest.

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