Mosquito Magnet ® traps as a potential means of monitoring blackflies of medical and veterinary importance

Mosquito Magnet® traps, deployed in widespread parts of England as part of nationwide mosquito surveillance projects, also caught blackflies. As many as 1242 blackflies were caught in a trapping session lasting 4 days. Principal among the species caught were Simulium equinum, Simulium lineatum and Simulium ornatum s.l. As S. ornatum s.l. is a vector that transmits Onchocerca linealis to cattle and S. equinum is responsible for dermatitis ('sweet itch') in cattle and horses, it is suggested that Mosquito Magnet® traps could be used to monitor and partially control these pests, as well as nuisance anthropophilic blackflies such as Simulium posticatum that can cause simuliidosis in southern England

Synthesis of the Ti-Silicate Form of BEC Polymorph of B-Zeolite Assisted by Molecular Modeling

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://doi.org/10.1021/jp805400u Published Work, see http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/articlesonrequest/index.html[EN] The K(+) free pure silica form of polymorph C (BEC) of beta-zeolite has been synthesized with a cationic organic structure directing agent (SDA) that was predicted best, out of a series of nine potentials, by means of modeling techniques. On the bases of this synthesis method, the Ti-BEC zeolite has been obtained which owing to the pore topology and dimensions shows a higher epoxidation activity than the Ti-beta-polymorph either with H(2)O(2) or organic peroxides as oxidants.The authors thank the CICYT for financial support (Project MAT 2006-14274-CO2-01). G.S. thanks "Centro de Calculo de la Universidad Politecnica de Valencia" for the use of their computational facilities. M.M. and P.S. thank ITQ for a scholarship. We also thank intramural project CRENATUM.Moliner Marin, M.; Serna Merino, PM.; Cantin Sanz, A.; Sastre Navarro, GI.; Díaz Cabañas, MJ.; Corma Canós, A. (2008). Synthesis of the Ti-Silicate Form of BEC Polymorph of B-Zeolite Assisted by Molecular Modeling. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. 112(49):19547-19554. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp805400uS19547195541124

Recent advances in gastrointestinal stromal tumors: Where are we going?

Tumores del estroma gastrointestinal; Inhibidores de la tirosina cinasa; LaparoscopiaGastrointestinal stromal tumors; Tyrosine kinase inhibitors; LaparoscopyTumors de l'estroma gastrointestinal; Inhibidors de la tirosina cinasa; LaparoscòpiaLos tumores del estroma gastrointestinal (GIST) suponen el 1-2% de los tumores digestivos, siendo su localización más frecuente el estómago (55-60%) y el intestino delgado (30%). Los avances más importantes sucedidos en los últimos años se centran en cuatro áreas: biología molecular, abordaje quirúrgico laparoscópico, manejo técnico del GIST en localizaciones inusuales y tratamiento e integración de la cirugía en el manejo del GIST avanzado. Los avances en el conocimiento de la biología molecular del GIST han dado lugar a la progresiva identificación de nueva mutaciones oncogénicas que hacen del concepto wild type obsoleto. Estos avances han permitido el desarrollo de dos nuevos fármacos, avapritinib y ripretinib, lo que permite el tratamiento de pacientes con mutaciones resistentes a las tres líneas terapéuticas clásicas. El tratamiento quirúrgico del GIST se rige por unos principios técnicos bien establecidos que el abordaje laparoscópico debe cumplir, abordaje que queda limitado por dos factores clave: localización y tamaño. El GIST de localización infrecuente (esófago, duodeno o recto, o extradigestivo) supone un reto terapéutico. Estos pacientes deben ser manejados en un contexto multidisciplinario. La cirugía queda integrada en el manejo del GIST avanzado, considerándose como adyuvante a los inhibidores de la tirosina cinasa.Gastrointestinal Stromal Sarcomas (GIST) are mesenchymal neoplasms whose incidence accounts for 1-2% of digestive tumors, being located in the stomach (55-60%) and small intestine (30%). The advances in its knowledge and management succeeded in the last years have being spectacular. This review aims to summarize the most important of them for surgeons. We identified four areas of interest: molecular oncology, laparoscopic approach, management of GIST located at unusual locations, and management of advanced GIST. Advances in the field of molecular oncology lead to the discovery of new oncogenic mutations making the term Wil Type GIST obsolete. Moreover, these advances allow for the development of 2 new drugs: Avapritinib and Ripretinib, that added to the previous 3 commercially available drugs (imatinib, sunitinib and regorafenib) make possible the management of GIST with resistant mutations. The principles of the surgical management of primary GIST are well stablished which laparoscopic approach must accomplish. This approach is limited by 2 main factors: location and size. The diagnosis of GIST in unusual locations as esophagus, duodenum, rectum of out of the gastrointestinal tract (EGIST), implies an extraordinary therapeutic challenge, being imperative to manage them by surgeons and oncologist among others in the setting of a multidisciplinary team. The management of advanced/metastatic GIST has changed in a revolutionary fashion because surgery is now part of its treatment as adjuvant to tyrosine kinase inhibitors

Development of research on morphological variation of historical south american populations based on non-metric dental traits

El análisis de rasgos no métricos dentales ha logrado establecer relaciones biológicas de grupos humanos pasados y actuales con un alto valor taxonómico. Aunque Sudamérica ha sido objeto de un número considerable de investigaciones sobre poblamiento, migraciones y mestizaje, son relativamente pocos los estudios que han utilizado información de rasgos dentales para este fin, con las consiguiente ausencia de datos en amplias zonas geográficas. Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura enMEDLINE, SciELO, REDALYC y LILACS, sin restricción de fecha de publicación. Se incluyeron artículos completos y disponibles primarios y secundarios en español, inglés y portugués donde se realice el análisis de rasgos morfológicos dentales en poblaciones sudamericanas con un contexto histórico anterior al siglo XX. Los artículos seleccionados fueron evaluados por dos investigadores de manera independiente. La búsqueda arrojó 2210 artículos de los cuales 19 cumplieron los criterios de inclusión, a los que se agregaron 9 luego de una búsqueda manual complementaria. Existe un desarrollo no equilibrado de la investigación sudamericana, tanto en el foco geográfico donde esta se realiza, como de los países y filiaciones de sus autores. Aunque se han logrado estandarizar los instrumentos de valoración de esos rasgos, se sugiere promover una profesionalización interdisciplinaria, el apoyo internacional de sus proyectos y el abordaje holístico de sus contenidos para potenciar la aplicabilidad de su valor taxonómico a poblaciones actuales.Studies of non-metric dental traits have managed to estimate biological relationships among ancient and contemporary human groups with a high taxonomic value. While South America has been subject of considerable research on settlement, migration and miscegenation, only a few studies have used information from dental traits for this purpose, with the consequent absence of data over wide geographical areas. A systematic review was conducted of the literature in MEDLINE, SciELO, REDALYC y LILACS, without limiting publication date. Full primary and secondary articles available in Spanish, English and Portuguese were included, where dental morphological traits were used to analyze SouthAmerican populations with a historical context prior to the twentieth century. The selected articles were evaluated by two researchers independently. The search revealed 2210 articles, of which 19 met the inclusion criteria, which added 9 after a complementary manual search. There is an unbalanced development of the SouthAmerican research, both in geographical focus where this is done, as countries and affiliations of the authors. While there has been standardized instruments valuation of these traits, it is suggested to promote an interdisciplinary professionalization, the international support of its projects and the holistic approach of its content to enhance the applicability of their taxonomic value to contemporary populations.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

Development of research on morphological variation of historical south american populations based on non-metric dental traits

El análisis de rasgos no métricos dentales ha logrado establecer relaciones biológicas de grupos humanos pasados y actuales con un alto valor taxonómico. Aunque Sudamérica ha sido objeto de un número considerable de investigaciones sobre poblamiento, migraciones y mestizaje, son relativamente pocos los estudios que han utilizado información de rasgos dentales para este fin, con las consiguiente ausencia de datos en amplias zonas geográficas. Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura enMEDLINE, SciELO, REDALYC y LILACS, sin restricción de fecha de publicación. Se incluyeron artículos completos y disponibles primarios y secundarios en español, inglés y portugués donde se realice el análisis de rasgos morfológicos dentales en poblaciones sudamericanas con un contexto histórico anterior al siglo XX. Los artículos seleccionados fueron evaluados por dos investigadores de manera independiente. La búsqueda arrojó 2210 artículos de los cuales 19 cumplieron los criterios de inclusión, a los que se agregaron 9 luego de una búsqueda manual complementaria. Existe un desarrollo no equilibrado de la investigación sudamericana, tanto en el foco geográfico donde esta se realiza, como de los países y filiaciones de sus autores. Aunque se han logrado estandarizar los instrumentos de valoración de esos rasgos, se sugiere promover una profesionalización interdisciplinaria, el apoyo internacional de sus proyectos y el abordaje holístico de sus contenidos para potenciar la aplicabilidad de su valor taxonómico a poblaciones actuales.Studies of non-metric dental traits have managed to estimate biological relationships among ancient and contemporary human groups with a high taxonomic value. While South America has been subject of considerable research on settlement, migration and miscegenation, only a few studies have used information from dental traits for this purpose, with the consequent absence of data over wide geographical areas. A systematic review was conducted of the literature in MEDLINE, SciELO, REDALYC y LILACS, without limiting publication date. Full primary and secondary articles available in Spanish, English and Portuguese were included, where dental morphological traits were used to analyze SouthAmerican populations with a historical context prior to the twentieth century. The selected articles were evaluated by two researchers independently. The search revealed 2210 articles, of which 19 met the inclusion criteria, which added 9 after a complementary manual search. There is an unbalanced development of the SouthAmerican research, both in geographical focus where this is done, as countries and affiliations of the authors. While there has been standardized instruments valuation of these traits, it is suggested to promote an interdisciplinary professionalization, the international support of its projects and the holistic approach of its content to enhance the applicability of their taxonomic value to contemporary populations.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

A new microporous zeolitic silicoborate (ITQ-52) with interconnected small and medium pores

A new zeolite (named as ITQ-52) having large cavities and small and medium channels has been synthesized. This was achieved by using a new family of amino-phosphonium cations as organic structure directing agents (OSDA). These cations contain P−C and P−N bonds, and therefore they lie between previously reported P-containing OSDA, such as tetraalkylphosphonium and phosphazenes. In this study, it has been found that 1,4- butanediylbis[tris(dimethylamino)]phosphonium dication is a very efficient OSDA for crystallization of several zeolites, and in some particular conditions, the new zeolite ITQ-52 was synthesized as a pure phase. The structure of ITQ-52 has been solved using high-resolution synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction data of the calcined solid. This new zeolite crystallizes in the space group I2/m, with cell parameters a = 17.511 Å, b = 17.907 Å, c = 12.367 Å, and β = 90.22°. The topology of ITQ-52 can be described as a replication of a composite building unit with ring notation [435461] that gives rise to the formation of an interconnected 8R and 10R channel system.We thank financial support by the Spanish Government (MAT2012-38567-C02-01, MAT2012-38567-C02-02, Consolider Ingenio 2010-Multicat CSD-2009-00050 and Severo Ochoa SEV-2012-0267). R.S. acknowledges to UPV for a FPI predoctoral fellowship. Authors thank ALBA Light Source for beam allocation at beamline MSPD. We thank G. Sastre and J. A. Vidal for computational calculations and MAS NMR experiments, respectively.Simancas Coloma, R.; Jorda Moret, JL.; Rey Garcia, F.; Corma Canós, A.; Cantin Sanz, A.; Peral, I.; Popescu, C. (2014). A new microporous zeolitic silicoborate (ITQ-52) with interconnected small and medium pores. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 136(9):3342-3345. doi:10.1021/ja411915cS33423345136

Experimental energetics of large and extra-large pore zeolites: Pure silica beta polymorph C (BEC) and Ge-containing ITQ-33

[EN] The enthalpies of formation of the large pore pure silica beta polymorph C (BEC) and the extra-large pore germanosilicate ITQ-33 zeolite are investigated by high temperature oxide melt solution calorimetry. The enthalpies of formation from quartz for two BECs synthesized with different organic structure directing agents, SDA1 and SDA9 differ by 4 kJ/mol. The two SDAs produce phases with different properties as well as different energetics for the same framework and composition, due to the different amount of structural defects, while the more defective BEC is energetically less stable by 4 kJ/mol. The enthalpy of formation of defect-free pure silica BEC agrees with the predicted value proposed several years ago. Moreover, the enthalpy of formation of ITQ-33 (Ge/(Ge + Si) = 0.3) supports the energetic trends seen previously, namely that the enthalpy of formation becomes more endothermic as the content of double four rings (D4R) increases. The previous trend of energetics of porous materials versus molar volume is supported by the present data, with a diminishing destabilization for very open structures.This calorimetric work at UC Davis was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Grant DE-FG02-05ER15667.Wu, L.; Hughes, J.; Moliner Marin, M.; Navrotsky, A.; Corma Canós, A. (2014). Experimental energetics of large and extra-large pore zeolites: Pure silica beta polymorph C (BEC) and Ge-containing ITQ-33. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials. 187:77-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2013.12.013S778118

Development and evaluation of a 9K SNP array for peach by internationally coordinated SNP detection and validation in breeding germplasm

Although a large number of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers covering the entire genome are needed to enable molecular breeding efforts such as genome wide association studies, fine mapping, genomic selection and marker-assisted selection in peach [Prunus persica (L.) Batsch] and related Prunus species, only a limited number of genetic markers, including simple sequence repeats (SSRs), have been available to date. To address this need, an international consortium (The International Peach SNP Consortium; IPSC) has pursued a coordinated effort to perform genome-scale SNP discovery in peach using next generation sequencing platforms to develop and characterize a high-throughput Illumina Infinium® SNP genotyping array platform. We performed whole genome re-sequencing of 56 peach breeding accessions using the Illumina and Roche/454 sequencing technologies. Polymorphism detection algorithms identified a total of 1,022,354 SNPs. Validation with the Illumina GoldenGate® assay was performed on a subset of the predicted SNPs, verifying ∼75% of genic (exonic and intronic) SNPs, whereas only about a third of intergenic SNPs were verified. Conservative filtering was applied to arrive at a set of 8,144 SNPs that were included on the IPSC peach SNP array v1, distributed over all eight peach chromosomes with an average spacing of 26.7 kb between SNPs. Use of this platform to screen a total of 709 accessions of peach in two separate evaluation panels identified a total of 6,869 (84.3%) polymorphic SNPs.The almost 7,000 SNPs verified as polymorphic through extensive empirical evaluation represent an excellent source of markers for future studies in genetic relatedness, genetic mapping, and dissecting the genetic architecture of complex agricultural traits. The IPSC peach SNP array v1 is commercially available and we expect that it will be used worldwide for genetic studies in peach and related stone fruit and nut species

New Insight into the Transcarbamylase Family: The Structure of Putrescine Transcarbamylase, a Key Catalyst for Fermentative Utilization of Agmatine

Transcarbamylases reversibly transfer a carbamyl group from carbamylphosphate (CP) to an amine. Although aspartate transcarbamylase and ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) are well characterized, little was known about putrescine transcarbamylase (PTC), the enzyme that generates CP for ATP production in the fermentative catabolism of agmatine. We demonstrate that PTC (from Enterococcus faecalis), in addition to using putrescine, can utilize L-ornithine as a poor substrate. Crystal structures at 2.5 Å and 2.0 Å resolutions of PTC bound to its respective bisubstrate analog inhibitors for putrescine and ornithine use, N-(phosphonoacetyl)-putrescine and δ-N-(phosphonoacetyl)-L-ornithine, shed light on PTC preference for putrescine. Except for a highly prominent C-terminal helix that projects away and embraces an adjacent subunit, PTC closely resembles OTCs, suggesting recent divergence of the two enzymes. Since differences between the respective 230 and SMG loops of PTC and OTC appeared to account for the differential preference of these enzymes for putrescine and ornithine, we engineered the 230-loop of PTC to make it to resemble the SMG loop of OTCs, increasing the activity with ornithine and greatly decreasing the activity with putrescine. We also examined the role of the C-terminal helix that appears a constant and exclusive PTC trait. The enzyme lacking this helix remained active but the PTC trimer stability appeared decreased, since some of the enzyme eluted as monomers from a gel filtration column. In addition, truncated PTC tended to aggregate to hexamers, as shown both chromatographically and by X-ray crystallography. Therefore, the extra C-terminal helix plays a dual role: it stabilizes the PTC trimer and, by shielding helix 1 of an adjacent subunit, it prevents the supratrimeric oligomerizations of obscure significance observed with some OTCs. Guided by the structural data we identify signature traits that permit easy and unambiguous annotation of PTC sequences