Draft Genome Sequences of Five Enterococcus Species Isolated from the Gut of Patients with Suspected Clostridium difficile Infection

Indexación: Scopus.We present draft genome sequences of five Enterococcus species from patients suspected of Clostridium difficile infection. Genome completeness was confirmed by presence of bacterial orthologs (97%). Gene searches using Hidden-Markov models revealed that the isolates harbor between seven and 11 genes involved in antibiotic resistance to tetracyclines, beta-lactams, and vancomycin.http://genomea.asm.org/content/5/20/e00379-17.ful

Mantos inducidos por microbialitas en sedimentos siliciclásticos plio-cuaternarios? del NO de Iberia

Microbial mats are organo-sedimentary deposits formed by bacteria that trap or synthesize certain chemical elements. This type of activity gives rise to the formation of lamellar and/or columnar bioconstructions (stromatolites) and/or concentric structures (oncolites and thrombolites). The study of microbial mats used to be restricted mainly to marine and coastal environments related to the formation of ancient carbonate sediments (Palaeozoic/Proterozoic), and/or extreme conditions in hypersaline environments. However, in recent years, the presence of these forms has been identified in continental siliciclastic rocks and sediments with a temporal distribution that reaches into modern times. In this study, several levels of ferruginous crusts associated with microbial activity are found, interspersed in a Cenozoic deposit located in the province of Zamora. This deposit consists of concentric, laminated iron structures filled with silt, interspersed throughout a clayey-silt layer of variegated colors which shows signs of bioturbation and desiccation due to fluid escape. These findings allow the inference of the sedimentary and climatic conditions responsible for the growth and preservation of microbial mats in the siliciclastic sediments of the north-western edge of the Duero BasinLos mantos microbiales constituyen depósitos organosedimentarios formados por bacterias que atrapan o sintetizan determinados elementos químicos. Este tipo de actividad da lugar a la formación de estructuras laminares y/o columnares (estromatolitos) y/o concéntricas (oncolitos y trombolitos). Su estudio, por tanto, quedaba reducido principalmente a ambientes marinos y litorales relacionados con la formación de sedimentos carbonatados de edad muy antigua (Paleozoico/ Proterozoico), y/o condiciones extremas en ambientes hipersalinos. Sin embargo, en los últimos años, se ha identificado la presencia de estas formas en rocas y sedimentos de afinidad continental y carácter siliciclástico, que se extienden temporalmente hasta la actualidad. En este estudio, se presenta el hallazgo de varios niveles de costras ferruginosas asociadas a la actividad microbiana, intercalados en un depósito cenozoico de la provincia de Zamora. Se trata de una serie de niveles caracterizados por la presencia de capas ferruginosas laminadas y concéntricas, constituidas por limos que aparecen en el techo y muro de un nivel arcilloso-limoso de colores abigarrados y signos de bioturbación y desecación por escape de fluidos. Este singular hallazgo permite establecer las condiciones sedimentarias y climáticas responsables del crecimiento y conservación de mantos microbianos en sedimentos siliciclásticos del borde noroccidental de la cuenca del Duer

Conformationally-Locked C-Glycosides: Tuning Aglycone Interactions for Optimal Cheperone Behaviour in Gaucher Fibroblasts

A series of conformationally locked C-glycosides based on the 3-aminopyrano[3,2-b]pyrrol-2(1H)-one (APP) scaffold has been synthesized. The key step involved a totally stereocontrolled C-Michael addition of a serine-equivalent C-nucleophile to tri-O-benzyl-2-nitro-D-galactal, previously published by the authors. Stereoselective transformations of the Michael adduct allowed us the synthesis of compounds with mono- or diantennated aglycone moieties and different topologies. In vitro screening showed highly selective inhibition of bovine liver β-glucosidase/β-galactosidase and specific inhibition of human β-glucocerebrosidase among lysosomal glycosidases for compounds bearing palmitoyl chains in the aglycone, with a marked dependence of the inhibition potency upon their number and location. Molecular dynamics simulations highlighted the paramount importance of an optimal orientation of the hydrophobic substituent to warrant efficient non-glycone interactions, which are critical for the binding affinity. The results provide a rationale for the strong decrease of the inhibition potency of APP compounds on going from neutral to acidic pH. The best candidate was found to behave as pharmacological chaperone in Gaucher fibroblasts with homozygous N370S and F213I mutations, with enzyme activity enhancements similar to those encountered for the reference compound AmbroxolMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad CTQ2012-36365, SAF2013-44021-RJunta de Andalucía FQM-1467European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7-People-2012-CI

Recognition of emotional facial expressions in Alexithymia

Alexithymia is a personality trait which is associated with difficulties in identifying and verbalizing emotions. Previous studies have shown a significant association between alexithymia and a lack of ability to decode emotional facial expressions. Three groups of university students (N = 1645) were formed by splitting the sample based on Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) scores. All participants performed an emotional expression recognition task, using the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes'" method. The experimenter presented images of the eye-region of the faces of actors and actresses. As expected, results showed that alexithymics performed worse on ability to infer others' emotional states expressed by the eyes. These results suggest that alexithymia is associated with impaired emotion recognition, that is most apparent when processing capacity is restricted, high-alexithymic individuals could develop less detailed perceptual representations of facial expression which might impair the process of drawing conclusions about its emotional significance

Control del curculiónido ferruginoso de las palmeras (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier) mediante inyecciones al tronco y pulverización foliar

En 1996 se confirmó la presencia en España, en la costa de la provincia de Granada, de una nueva plaga sobre palmeras conocida como curculiónido ferruginoso de las palmeras, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier. Dentro de las estrategias de lucha contra este insecto se llevaron a cabo una serie de ensayos de efectividad de distintos productos insecticidas aplicados al suelo, por inyección al tronco, en pulverización foliar o una combinación de estos dos últimos métodos. Los mayores porcentajes de eficacia se obtuvieron mediante la aplicación de insecticidas por inyección al tronco de la palmera, combinada con una pulverización foliar con el mismo insecticida para controlar los estadios del insecto situados en la zona exterior, de pencas y cogollo, donde el insecticida aplicado por inyección no consigue distribuirse. Las materias activas insecticidas que presentaron mayor eficacia fueron Carbaril, Fipronil e Imidacloprid. Asimismo se ha observado la idoneidad de mezclar el insecticida aplicado en pulverización foliar con un aceite mineral parafínico o de verano para mejorar su eficacia

Kuvausryhmän hierarkia

En este trabajo se estudian procedimientos para la elección entre las soluciones eficientes del Problema de Programación Lineal con Objetivos Múltiples, cuando el decisor manifiesta preferencias sobre ciertas ordenaciones de las valoraciones de las funciones objetivo, utilizándose como criterio de valoración global funciones basadas en el k-ésimo valor del vector de los objetivos ordenado en cada punto. Se desarrollan procedimientos para generar ordenaciones compatibles con la información del decisor. Estos se incorporan en un proceso interactivo que proporciona una solución eficiente final con un mayor compromiso, a juicio del decisor, en las valoraciones de todos los objetivos

The effect of low number of points in clustering validation via the negentropy increment

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Neurocomputing. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Neurocomputing, 74, 16, (2011) DOI: 10.1016/j.neucom.2011.03.023Selected papers of the 10th International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (IWANN2009)We recently introduced the negentropy increment, a validity index for crisp clustering that quantifies the average normality of the clustering partitions using the negentropy. This index can satisfactorily deal with clusters with heterogeneous orientations, scales and densities. One of the main advantages of the index is the simplicity of its calculation, which only requires the computation of the log-determinants of the covariance matrices and the prior probabilities of each cluster. The negentropy increment provides validation results which are in general better than those from other classic cluster validity indices. However, when the number of data points in a partition region is small, the quality in the estimation of the log-determinant of the covariance matrix can be very poor. This affects the proper quantification of the index and therefore the quality of the clustering, so additional requirements such as limitations on the minimum number of points in each region are needed. Although this kind of constraints can provide good results, they need to be adjusted depending on parameters such as the dimension of the data space. In this article we investigate how the estimation of the negentropy increment of a clustering partition is affected by the presence of regions with small number of points. We find that the error in this estimation depends on the number of points in each region, but not on the scale or orientation of their distribution, and show how to correct this error in order to obtain an unbiased estimator of the negentropy increment. We also quantify the amount of uncertainty in the estimation. As we show, both for 2D synthetic problems and multidimensional real benchmark problems, these results can be used to validate clustering partitions with a substantial improvement.This work has been funded by DGUI-CAM/UAM (Project CCG10-UAM/TIC-5864

Genomic analyses of microdissected Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg cells: mutations in epigenetic regulators and p53 are frequent in refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma

This work was supported by grants from the Plan Nacional de I + D + I cofinanced by the ISCIII-Subdirección General de Evaluación and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), PI12/1832, the Spanish Association for Cancer Research (AECC), and Programas para Grupos de Investigación de la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (Biomedicina 2017)