Virulence Attenuation of Candida albicans Genetic Variants Isolated from a Patient with a Recurrent Bloodstream Infection

The incidence of Candida albicans infections and the relapse episodes after antifungal treatment have increased in recent decades. Recurrences are mainly due to the persistence of the original infecting strain that may present genetic and genomic rearrangements during interaction with the host, reflecting strain adaptation. In this study, four isolates recovered from a patient during recurrent candidemia episodes were genotyped by microsatellite length polymorphism (MLP) and by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and found to be genetic variants of the same strain. Using experimental mouse infections, a progressive reduction in the virulence of the four isolates was observed, with the first two isolates more virulent than the third and fourth. Additionally, in the mouse model, the first isolate resisted host control more efficiently, resulting in higher kidney fungal burdens and necrosis as compared to the third isolate. The resolution of inflammation was delayed in mice challenged with the first isolate and the message for IFN-γ and TNF-α in the spleen was lower within the first few hours post-infection. Original and recurrent isolates also displayed different phenotypes regarding activity of secreted enzymes and response to stress agents. Overall, the comparative analysis indicated that the virulence decrease of these isolates was related to a lower ability to resist to the host anticandida effector mechanisms. We showed for the first time that C. albicans genetic variants of the same strain, sequentially isolated from an immunocompromised patient, underwent adaptations in the human host that resulted in virulence attenuation when tested in mice

Educação ambiental com alunos do 1° ao 3° do ensino fundamental de uma escola municipal rural do município de Uberlândia-MG / Environmental education with students from 1º to 3º of the fundamental education of a rural municipal school of the municipality of Uberlândia-MG

O aumento das atividades humanas vem comprometendo a qualidade da água e aumentando assim a preocupação com a escassez desse recurso que já acomete parcelas da população mundial. A escassez e poluição da água podem ocasionar doenças de veiculação hídrica nas pessoas. Assim, a Educação Ambiental é utilizada como instrumento para incorporar valores e atitudes aos conhecimentos sobre processos ambientais e, dessa forma, conscientizar a população sobre a importância de uma relação equilibrada dos indivíduos com o ambiente em que vivem. Esse trabalho mostra o resultado de atividades realizadas com alunos do 1° ao 3° anos do Ensino Fundamental de uma Escola Municipal da zona rural do Município de Uberlândia-MG. Com as atividades foram abordados os seguintes assuntos: usos e importância, uso racional da água; contaminação e doenças de veiculação hídrica. As crianças se mostraram bastante participativas e gostaram de realizar trabalho em grupo, o conhecimento adquirido será compartilhado com seus familiares enquanto conta sobre seu dia na escola, tornando mais abrangente os resultados do trabalho. O mural montado ao final permite a socialização dos conhecimentos, conscientizando assim toda a comunidade escolar sobre a importância da água e sua preservação para o uso das atuais e futuras gerações.

Educação ambiental com alunos do 1° ao 3° do ensino fundamental de uma escola municipal rural do município de Uberlândia-MG / Environmental education with students from 1º to 3º of the fundamental education of a rural municipal school of the municipality of Uberlândia-MG

O aumento das atividades humanas vem comprometendo a qualidade da água e aumentando assim a preocupação com a escassez desse recurso que já acomete parcelas da população mundial. A escassez e poluição da água podem ocasionar doenças de veiculação hídrica nas pessoas. Assim, a Educação Ambiental é utilizada como instrumento para incorporar valores e atitudes aos conhecimentos sobre processos ambientais e, dessa forma, conscientizar a população sobre a importância de uma relação equilibrada dos indivíduos com o ambiente em que vivem. Esse trabalho mostra o resultado de atividades realizadas com alunos do 1° ao 3° anos do Ensino Fundamental de uma Escola Municipal da zona rural do Município de Uberlândia-MG. Com as atividades foram abordados os seguintes assuntos: usos e importância, uso racional da água; contaminação e doenças de veiculação hídrica. As crianças se mostraram bastante participativas e gostaram de realizar trabalho em grupo, o conhecimento adquirido será compartilhado com seus familiares enquanto conta sobre seu dia na escola, tornando mais abrangente os resultados do trabalho. O mural montado ao final permite a socialização dos conhecimentos, conscientizando assim toda a comunidade escolar sobre a importância da água e sua preservação para o uso das atuais e futuras gerações.

Rational manipulation of mRNA folding free energy allows rheostat control of pneumolysin production by Streptococcus pneumoniae

Rational manipulation of mRNA folding free energy allows rheostat control of pneumolysin production by Streptococcus pneumoniaeThe contribution of specific factors to bacterial virulence is generally investigated through creation of genetic "knockouts" that are then compared to wild-type strains or complemented mutants. This paradigm is useful to understand the effect of presence vs. absence of a specific gene product but cannot account for concentration-dependent effects, such as may occur with some bacterial toxins. In order to assess threshold and dose-response effects of virulence factors, robust systems for tunable expression are required. Recent evidence suggests that the folding free energy (?G) of the 5' end of mRNA transcripts can have a significant effect on translation efficiency and overall protein abundance. Here we demonstrate that rational alteration of 5' mRNA folding free energy by introduction of synonymous mutations allows for predictable changes in pneumolysin (PLY) expression by Streptococcus pneumoniae without the need for chemical inducers or heterologous promoters. We created a panel of isogenic S. pneumoniae strains, differing only in synonymous (silent) mutations at the 5' end of the PLY mRNA that are predicted to alter ?G. Such manipulation allows rheostat-like control of PLY production and alters the cytotoxicity of whole S. pneumoniae on primary and immortalized human cells. These studies provide proof-of-principle for further investigation of mRNA ?G manipulation as a tool in studies of bacterial pathogenesis.National Institutes of Health (www.nih.gov) (R01 AI092743 and R21 AI111020 to A.J.R.). F.E.A. was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (www.fct.pt) SFRH/BD/33901/2009 and the Luso-American Development Foundation (www.flad.pt). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Uma coleção de história em um museu de ciências naturais: o Museu Paulista de Hermann von Ihering

Instalado em um edifício-Monumento, data de 1895 a inauguração do Museu Paulista. Seu primeiro diretor, o zoólogo Hermann Von Ihering (1895-1916), teve a tarefa de organizar suas vastas coleções, as quais possuíam objetos de diversos ramos do conhecimento, entre eles, a História. Este artigo tem a intenção de entender a dimensão, dinâmica e concepção desta coleção de História, que recebeu pouca atenção da Historiografia relativa ao tema.The Museu Paulista, installed in a landmark building, was inaugurated in 1895. Its first director, the zoologist Herman von Ihering (1895-1916) undertook the assignment of organizing its extensive collections, which comprehended objects pertaining to varied fields of knowledge, including that of History. The present article aims at understanding the dimension, the dynamics and the conception of this historical collection. Until now little attention has been bestowed upon this subject matter by the specialized historiography

Candomblé and the Academic's Tools : Religious Expertise and the Binds of Recognition in Brazil

ABSTRACT Latin American state efforts to recognize ethnically and racially marked populations have focused on knowledge and expertise. This article argues that this form of state recognition does not only call on subaltern groups to present themselves in a frame of expertise. It also pushes such groups to position themselves and their social and political struggles in a matrix based on expertise and knowledge. In the context of early 2000s Brazil, the drive to recognition led activists from the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé to reimagine the religion's practitioners? long-term engagements with scholars and scholarly depictions of the religion as a form of epistemological exploitation that had resulted in public misrecognition of the true source of knowledge on the religion: Candomblé practitioners. To remedy this situation, the activists called on Candomblé practitioners to appropriate the ?academic's tools,? the modes of representation by which scholarly expertise and knowledge were performed and recognized by the general public and state officials. This strategy transformed religious structures of expertise and knowledge in ways that established a new, politically efficacious epistemological grounding for Candomblé practitioners? calls for recognition. But it also further marginalized temples with limited connections or access to scholars and higher education. [politics of recognition, politics of expertise, state recognition, Candomblé religion, Brazil]Peer reviewe

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio