Multiple online-HPLC methodologies and biological properties of leaves and stem barks extracts of Chrysanthellum indicum

Chrysanthellum indicum, an annual herb with yellow flowers, is used as a functional food in Asia and Africa for health purposes. In this study, we thoroughly investigated the characterization of phytochemicals within C. indicum's ethyl acetate, water, and methanolic extracts from both its bark and leaves. This was achieved through the utilization of the Folin Ciocalteu and aluminum trichloride assays. Moreover, the antioxidant properties of these extracts were comprehensively assessed employing microplate-based assays including ABTS, DPPH, CUPRAC, FRAP, MCA, and PBD, alongside online HPLC-based assays namely ABTS, DPPH, CUPRAC, and FRAP. Furthermore, the inhibitory activity against a range of enzymes, including AChE, BChE, tyrosinase, α-amylase, and α-glucosidase, was ascertained. The tested ethyl acetate extracts from bark and leaves had higher content of total phenolic and flavonoid compared to methanol and water extracts. Additionally, the bark extract exhibited superior antioxidant properties in the in vitro antioxidant assays. Meanwhile, in the realm of online HPLC antioxidant analysis, an effective method has been discovered for swiftly determining the individual antioxidant capacity of compounds within both standard solutions and extract. Within the entirety of the samples subjected to scrutiny, rutin surfaced as the foremost antioxidant, exhibiting its prominence at wavelengths of 280 nm, 595 nm, and 450 nm. Following suit, quercetin emerged as the second most abundant antioxidant, noticeable at wavelengths of 517 nm and 734 nm, both in leaves and bark extracts. Significantly, the extracts derived from both bark and leaves demonstrated noteworthy effectiveness in inhibiting the tyrosinase enzyme. Thus, our study indicates that Chrysanthellum indicum could serve as a promising reservoir of natural bioactive compounds, making it suitable for the formulation of health-promoting applications.Peer reviewe

Desarrollo de un modelo in vivo para el estudio proteómico de los mecanismos de invasión del parásito Fasciola hepatica

1 página. -- Comunicación oral presentada en las IX Jornadas de investigadoras de Castilla y León, celebradas en Salamanca, del 9 al 10 de febrero de 2023La fasciolosis producida por Fasciola hepatica es una enfermedad parasitaria que causa grandes pérdidas económicas en la industria ganadera, y una preocupación sanitaria creciente a nivel mundial debido a su carácter zoonótico. Los mecanismos moleculares que rigen la invasión llevada a cabo por el parásito desde el intestino hasta las vías biliares del hospedador siguen planteando grandes incógnitas. Por ello, el objetivo de este trabajo fue establecer un modelo de infección experimental en ratón para identificar las moléculas parasitarias clave durante la migración de los vermes juveniles a través de los tejidos del hospedador. Ratones C57BL/6 se infectaron oralmente con 200 metacercarias de F. hepatica y, posteriormente, los parásitos fueron recuperados a las 24 horas en la cavidad peritoneal (9.38 % tasa de recuperación) y a los 8 días en el parénquima hepático (21.19 % tasa de recuperación). Los extractos parasitarios tegumental y somático y sus respectivos controles se sometieron a proteómica cuantitativa mediante la adquisición secuencial de todos los espectros de masas teóricos o SWATH-MS, de sus siglas en inglés "Sequential Window Acquisition of All Theoretical Mass Spectra". Los resultados proteómicos revelan la presencia de 1180 proteínas en las muestras, de las cuales, 243 proteínas se expresan diferencialmente en los parásitos extraídos en el peritoneo y 543 proteínas en los procedentes del hígado. La anotación ontológica de los términos asociados a estas proteínas apunta principalmente a la relevancia de mecanismos de defensa antioxidante, proteolíticos, de motilidad, metabólicos y de transporte de moléculas en la invasión llevada a cabo por F. hepatica. En conjunto, los avances de este estudio profundizarán en el conocimiento de la interacción parásito-hospedador de la fasciolosis para identificar nuevas dianas moleculares en el desarrollo de vacunas frente a F. hepatica.PID2019-108782RB-C22 y PID2019-108782RB-C21 financiados por MICINN, AEI y FEDER y CL-EI-2021-01 IRNASA-CSIC patrocinado por la JCyL y cofinanciado por FEDERPeer reviewe

Motivación de las vocaciones científicas en microbiología en alumnos de educación infantil y primaria

Resumen del poster presentado en: XXIX Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Microbiología SEM. Microorganismos: un universo en continua evolucion. Burgos, España. 25-28 junio (2023)Proyectos PID2021-123164OB-I00, EMERGIA20_00114, TED2021-129599B-I00. Agradecemos a Vanesa Rodríguez Valero, Daniel Sánchez Hernández y Rocío Quero García, docentes del C.E.I.P. José Hurtado, Granada

Identification of trace elements and biomolecules in extracellular vesicles secreted by human RPE cells by ICP-MS

Resumen del trabajo presentado 19th European Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, celebrado en Ljubljana (Eslovenia), del 29 de enero al 3 de febrero de 2023Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness, affecting almost 200 million people worldwide. Previous studies of AMD have revealed that progressive degeneration of the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells play an important role in the development of AMD. Human RPE cells secrete extracellular vesicles (EVs), whose cell-tocell signalling function may be crucial during early stages of AMD (1). Therefore, the study of the possible implication of EVs in dyshomeostasis and RPE cell degeneration during AMD is of great research interest.EVs are nano-sized vesicles containing nucleic acid and protein cargo that are released from a multitude of cell types and have gained significant interest as potential diagnostic biomarkers. Biological fluids (including cell culture media, urine, plasma and serum) are rich sources of readily accessible EVs. However, the isolation of EVs from proteins and non- EV lipid particles represents a considerable challenge nowadays.In this work we present the development of protocols for the purification of EVs from cell culture media of in vitro models of human RPE cells (hRPE), subjected to a pro-oxidative stress treatment and control, for the determination of trace metals and proteins in EVs. Two isolation strategies were evaluated by differential centrifugation and precipitation. The characterization of purified EVs was further performed by dynamic light scattering, nanoparticle tracking analysis, and transmission electron microscopy. Concerning metals determination, and taking into account the limited sample volume (less than 100 L), different sample introduction systems were evaluated to obtain Fe, Cu and Zn concentration in EVs by ICP-MS. Metal nanoclusters (MNCs) were employed as the elemental label for CD81 and TSG101 proteins detection by ICP-MS.EVs analysed by conventional nebulization ICP-MS provides information of the whole population as an average. However, it is well-known that cells in all biological systems have a heterogeneous nature and, therefore, EVs can also exhibit a non-homogeneous behaviour. The combination of single cell (sc) ICP-MS with an immunocytochemistry step using MNCs has been explored to identify EVs purified from control and treated individual hRPE cells

Interacciones positivas y negativas entre componentes de la microbiota del queso

Trabajo fin de máster presentado en la Universidad de Oviedo, Máster Universitario en Biotecnología Alimentari

Estimating the probability of occurrence of African dust outbreaks over regions of the western Mediterranean basin from thermodynamic atmospheric parameters

/© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Desert dust is currently recognized as a health risk factor. Therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO) is actively promoting the establishment of early warning systems for sand and dust storms. This study introduces a methodology to estimate the probability of African dust outbreaks occurring in eight different regions of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. In each region, a multilinear regression model was developed to calculate daily probabilities of dust events using three thermodynamic variables (geopotential thickness in the 1000-500 hPa layer, mean potential temperature between 925 and 700 hPa, and temperature anomalies at 850 hPa) as assessment parameters. All days with African dust transport over each study region were identified in the period 2001-2021 using a proven procedure. This information was then utilized to establish a functional relationship between the values of the thermodynamic parameters and the probability of African dust outbreaks occurring. The validation of this methodology involved comparing the daily probabilities of dust events generated by the models in 2001-2021 with the daily African dust contributions to PM10 regional background levels in each region. On average, daily dust contributions increased proportionally with the increase in daily probabilities, reaching zero for days with low probabilities. Furthermore, a well-defined seasonal evolution of probability values was observed in all regions, with the highest values in the summer months and the lowest in the winter period, ensuring the physical relevance of the models' results. Finally, upward trends were observed in all regions for the three thermodynamic parameters over 1940-2021. Thus, the probability of dust events development also increased in this period. It demonstrates that the aggravation of warm conditions in southern Europe in the last decades, have modified the frequency of North-African dust outbreaks over the western Mediterranean basin.This research received support from the POSAHPI project (Gobierno de España, Agencia Estatal de Investigación, grant PID2019-108101RB-I00), and the ASAH-AS project (Grants for scientific research projects in the National Parks Network for the year 2021, Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, ref. 2799/2021). The authors extend their gratitude to the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of the HYSPLIT trajectory model (https://www.arl.noaa.gov/hysplit/hysplit/), the Atmospheric Modelling & Weather Forecasting Group - University of Athens (http://forecast.uoa.gr), the Earth Science Department - Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (https://dust.aemet.es/products/daily-dust-products), the Naval Research Laboratory (https://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/aerosol/) and the NASA (https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/) for the provision of the SKIRON, DREAM/BSC-DREAM8b and MONARCH, NAAPs aerosol maps and the satellite imagery, respectively. Hersbach et al. (2023) was downloaded from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) (2023). The results contain modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2023. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains.Peer reviewe

Hydrogen Bonds Are Never of an “Anti-electrostatic” Nature: A Brief Tour of a Misleading Nomenclature

A large amount of scientific works have contributed through the years to rigorously reflect the different forces leading to the formation of hydrogen bonds, the electrostatic and polarization ones being the most important among them. However, we have witnessed lately with the emergence of a new terminology, anti-electrostatic hydrogen bonds (AEHBs), that seems to contradict this reality. This nomenclature is used in the literature to describe hydrogen bonds between equally charged systems to justify the existence of these species, despite numerous proofs showing that AEHBs are, as any other hydrogen bond between neutral species, mostly due to electrostatic forces. In this Viewpoint, we summarize the state of the art regarding this issue, try to explain why this terminology is very misleading, and strongly recommend avoiding its use based on the hydrogen bond physical grounds.This work was carried out with financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (projects PID2021-125207NB-C31 and PID2021-125207NB-C32).Peer reviewe

Patrimonio industrial. El legado socio-económico fabril y agro-manufacturero. Los casos de Cuba y Matanzas

Peer reviewe

Atypical cortical hierarchy in Aβ-positive older adults and its reflection in spontaneous speech

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).Abnormal deposition of Aβ amyloid is an early neuropathological marker of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), arising long ahead of clinical symptoms. Non-invasive measures of associated early neurofunctional changes, together with easily accessible behavioral readouts of these changes, could be of great clinical benefit. We pursued this aim by investigating large-scale cortical gradients of functional connectivity with functional MRI, which capture the hierarchical integration of cortical functions, together with acoustic-prosodic features from spontaneous speech, in cognitively unimpaired older adults with and without Aβ positivity (total N = 188). We predicted distortions of the cortical hierarchy associated with prosodic changes in the Aβ + group. Results confirmed substantially altered cortical hierarchies and less variability in these in the Aβ + group, together with an increase in quantitative prosodic measures, which correlated with gradient variability as well as digit span test scores. Overall, these findings confirm that long before the clinical stage and objective cognitive impairment, increased risk of cognitive decline as indexed by Aβ accumulation is marked by neurofunctional changes in the cortical hierarchy, which are related to automatically extractable speech patterns and alterations in working memory functions.This research was supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC202108390062 to RH), the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (grant PID2019-105241 GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 to WH), and partially by French Investissements d’Avenir - Labex EFL program (ANR-10- LABX-0083 to the IdEx Université Paris Cité - ANR-18-IDEX-0001, to JAT).Peer reviewe

Paleomagnetism and rock magnetism in the sedimentary infill of Cova del Gegant (NE Iberian Peninsula): Secular variation and climate shifts during the Late Pleistocene

The Cova del Gegant presents one of the few archaeological sequences in the NE Iberian Peninsula that has yielded Neanderthal human remains associated with Mousterian lithic tools, pleistocene faunal remains and evidence of occupations related to the Middle Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic transition (Daura et al., 2021 and references therein). The sedimentary filling of the cave took place between MIS 5 and MIS 2 with repeated occupations during Middle and Upper Palaeolithic (Daura et al., 2021). This is a particularly interesting time period to study the evolution of the human occupation of the cave in a context of progressive global cooling and lowering of sea level. With this objective, we have conducted a paleomagnetic and rock magnetism study along a profile of 1.37 m in the reare of GP2 gallery. We have studied 77 oriented samples to determine the paleomagnetic directions aiming to identify the Laschamp geomagnetic excursion, which occurred around 41 ka. Additionally, the magnetic properties of the <1mm fraction were studied to relate the magnetic parameters ( , % fd,, IRM, hysteresis loops, backfield curves and thermomagnetic curves) to changes in the magnetic mineralogy linked to climatic oscillations.La Cova del Gegant presenta una de las pocas secuencias arqueológicas del NE de la Península Ibérica que ha proporcionado restos humanos neandertales asociados a herramientas líticas musterienses, restos de fauna pleistocenos y evidencias de ocupaciones relacionadas con la transición Paleolítico Medio –Superior (Daura et al., 2021 y referencias). El relleno sedimentario de la cueva tuvo lugar entre el MIS 5 y el MIS 2 con eventos de ocupación recurrentes entre el Paleolítico Medio y el Superior (Daura et al., 2021). Este es un momento especialmente interesante para estudiar la evolución de la ocupación humana de la cueva en un contexto de enfriamiento global progresivo y descenso del nivel del mar. Con este objetivo se ha realizado un estudio paleomagnético y de magnetismo de rocas a lo largo de un perfil de 1.37 m en el final de la galería GP2. Se han estudiado 77 muestras orientadas para determinar las direcciones paleomagnèticas e intentar identificar la excursión geomagnética Laschamp (~41 ka). Adicionalmente, se han estudiado las propiedades magnéticas de la fracción < 1mm para relacionar los parámetros magnéticos ( , % fd, IRM, ciclos de histéresis, curvas backfield y curvas termomagnéticas) con cambios en la mineralogía magnética ligados a las oscilaciones climáticasEB y MG agradecen a GGAC 2021 SGR00076 (AGAUR). AC agradece al proyecto PID2019-105796GB-I00 de la Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI/10.13039/501100011033). Investigación realizada con el apoyo de la beca postdoctoral Ramon y Cajal (RYC2021-032999-I) del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación y la Unión Europea NextGenerationEU (MS); Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya (CLT/2022/ARQ001SOLC/128), AGAUR (SGR2021-00337); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2020-113960GB-100)