Transcriptomics and interactomics during the primary infection of an SfNPV baculovirus on Spodoptera frugiperda larvae

The fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda, has been the most devastating pest of corn as well as of other crops in America, and more recently in Africa and Asia. The development of resistance to chemical insecticides led the search for environmentally friendly biological alternatives such as baculoviruses. This study focuses on the primary infection of the baculovirus SfNPV-Ar in the FAW’s midgut epithelium, by analyzing the differential expression of transcripts in excised midguts at 6, 12, and 24 h post-infection (hpi), and predicted their interactions. Interaction of viral factors with the infected midgut tissue could alters various cellular processes, such as the apoptotic system due to the up-regulation observed of FABP at 6 hpi and of HSP90 at 24 hpi, along with the down-regulated PRX at 6 hpi and FABP transcripts between 12 and 24 hpi. Changes in transcript regulation could affect the cellular architecture of infected cells due to up-regulation of ARP 2/3 at 6 and 12 hpi, followed by down-regulation at 24 hpi. In relation to protein folding proteins, HSP90 was up-regulated at 24 hpi and PDI was down-regulated between 6 and 12 hpi. With respect to metabolism and cellular transport, AcilBP and ATPS0 were up regulated at 6 hpi and 12 hpi, respectively. In reference to transcription and translation up-regulation of RPL11 at 6 hpi and of FPN32 and RPL19 at 24 hpi was detected, as well as the down-regulation of RPL19 at 6 hpi, of PDI and RPL7 at 12 hpi, and of FABP at 24 hpi. In conclusion, gene regulation induced by viral infection could be related to the cytoskeleton and cellular metabolism as well as to oxidative stress, apoptosis, protein folding, translation, and ribosomal structure. The results presented in this work are an approach to understanding how the virus takes control of the general metabolism of the insect host during the primary infection period

Primer registro de Archytas marmoratus y Voria ruralis (Diptera: Tachinidae) y sus niveles de parasitoidismo en dos lepidópteros plaga en Coahuila, México

Two parasitoid tachinids: Archytas marmoratus (Townsed) and Voria ruralis (Fallén) from the State of Coahuila, Mexico attacking two Lepidoptera pests and their parasitoidism level over its host are informed. A parasitoidism level of 8.67% by A. marmoratus on Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), and 20.67% by V. ruralis on Trichoplusia ni were recorded.Se reportan a dos tachínidos parasitoides: Archytas marmoratus (Townsend) y Voria ruralis (Fallén) para el estado de Coahuila, México, atacando a dos lepidópteros de importancia agrícola y sus niveles de parasitoidismo sobre su hospedero. Se registró un nivel de parasitoidismo de 8.67% de A. marmoratus sobre Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith) y 20.67% de V. ruralis sobre larvas de Trichoplusia ni (Hübner)

Famílies botàniques de plantes medicinals

Facultat de Farmàcia, Universitat de Barcelona. Ensenyament: Grau de Farmàcia, Assignatura: Botànica Farmacèutica, Curs: 2013-2014, Coordinadors: Joan Simon, Cèsar Blanché i Maria Bosch.Els materials que aquí es presenten són els recull de 175 treballs d’una família botànica d’interès medicinal realitzats de manera individual. Els treballs han estat realitzat per la totalitat dels estudiants dels grups M-2 i M-3 de l’assignatura Botànica Farmacèutica durant els mesos d’abril i maig del curs 2013-14. Tots els treballs s’han dut a terme a través de la plataforma de GoogleDocs i han estat tutoritzats pel professor de l’assignatura i revisats i finalment co-avaluats entre els propis estudiants. L’objectiu principal de l’activitat ha estat fomentar l’aprenentatge autònom i col·laboratiu en Botànica farmacèutica

Optimization of the Clustal X program for the alignment of multicopper oxidase bacterial sequences and their presence in the Bacillus genus

Bioinformatic methods for the alignment of amino acid sequences and function prediction have to be robust, principally in conserved regions bound to enzymatic activity. In order to optimize amino acid sequence alignment in multicopper oxidase conserved sites of a collection of 103 bacterial sequences, modification were made in the weight values in different matrices for amino acid residues from the Clustal X 1.83 program. The results obtained with modified Clustal X program allowed us to identify different multicopper oxidase activity according to the groups from the relationship diagram, identifying two well differentiated groups within the Bacillus genus. This analysis allowed infers multicopper oxidase activity in Bacillus thuringiensis similar to that presented by Bacillus halodurans, but distinct with respect to other laccase type bacterial oxidases. Specific oligonucleotides were designed to amplify through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) the gene that codifies for the B. thuringiensis laccase, finding that this sequence is present in only 6 out of 32 sero varieties of B. thuringiensis analyzed.Key words: Bacterial laccases, protein matrices, conserved motifs, multicopper oxidase

Virulence and genetic characterization of six baculovirus strains isolated from different populations of Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

International audienc

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts