Uso de microrganismos de efluente industrial no controle biológico de vetores

Justificativa e Objetivos: a utilização de microrganismos como controle biológico de vetores sanitários pode ser considerada uma prática menos agressiva ao ambiente, em comparação com os produtos químicos utilizados. O presente estudo avaliou a eficiência de suspensões celulares de fungos e bactérias isolados de efluentes industriais têxteis no controle sanitário dos vetores naturais Aedes aegypti e Dermacentor nitens como alternativa sustentável de controle biológico. Métodos: foram avaliadas sete linhagens de fungos e seis de bactérias. Os isolados foram cultivados em caldo nutriente e caldo de batata, para bactérias e fungos, respectivamente. Alíquotas de 2 mL de cada suspensão microbiana foram adicionadas diretamente nas larvas dos mosquitos e nos carrapatos adultos. Foram analisadas alterações de movimentação e paralisação dos vetores em diferentes tempos de exposição entre zero e 20 minutos e três e 24 horas. Resultados: duas bactérias e um fungo promoveram uma desaceleração dos movimentos e/ou um aumento da movimentação dos ectoparasitas logo após a administração. Dois isolados bacterianos promoveram a paralisação dos movimentos de uma larva do mosquito Aedes aegypti em seu primeiro estágio de desenvolvimento, enquanto que um fungo provocou aumento da movimentação das larvas em seu estágio de desenvolvimento mais avançado. Conclusão: os microrganismos mostraram potencial uso no controle de vetores sanitários. Testes subsequentes de atividade dos possíveis metabólitos secundários produzidos e das formas de administração das culturas microbianas serão executados. Os resultados encontrados encorajam futuros estudos de otimização e caracterização dos extratos celulares, os quais poderão ser utilizados como ferramenta sustentável no controle biológico

Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil: setting the baseline knowledge on the animal diversity in Brazil

The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian megadiverse fauna is no exception, and the Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil (CTFB) (http://fauna.jbrj.gov.br/), made public in 2015, represents a database on biodiversity anchored on a list of valid and expertly recognized scientific names of animals in Brazil. The CTFB is updated in near real time by a team of more than 800 specialists. By January 1, 2024, the CTFB compiled 133,691 nominal species, with 125,138 that were considered valid. Most of the valid species were arthropods (82.3%, with more than 102,000 species) and chordates (7.69%, with over 11,000 species). These taxa were followed by a cluster composed of Mollusca (3,567 species), Platyhelminthes (2,292 species), Annelida (1,833 species), and Nematoda (1,447 species). All remaining groups had less than 1,000 species reported in Brazil, with Cnidaria (831 species), Porifera (628 species), Rotifera (606 species), and Bryozoa (520 species) representing those with more than 500 species. Analysis of the CTFB database can facilitate and direct efforts towards the discovery of new species in Brazil, but it is also fundamental in providing the best available list of valid nominal species to users, including those in science, health, conservation efforts, and any initiative involving animals. The importance of the CTFB is evidenced by the elevated number of citations in the scientific literature in diverse areas of biology, law, anthropology, education, forensic science, and veterinary science, among others

Experimental validation of photonic boson sampling

A boson sampling device is a specialized quantum computer that solves a problem that is strongly believed to be computationally hard for classical computers. Recently, a number of small-scale implementations have been reported, all based on multiphoton interference in multimode interferometers. Akin to several quantum simulation and computation tasks, an open problem in the hard-to-simulate regime is to what extent the correctness of the boson sampling outcomes can be certified. Here, we report new boson sampling experiments on larger photonic chips and analyse the data using a recently proposed scalable statistical test. We show that the test successfully validates small experimental data samples against the hypothesis that they are uniformly distributed. In addition, we show how to discriminate data arising from either indistinguishable or distinguishable photons. Our results pave the way towards larger boson sampling experiments whose functioning, despite being non-trivial to simulate, can be certified against alternative hypotheses

The Deoxyhypusine Synthase Mutant <i>dys1-1</i> Reveals the Association of eIF5A and Asc1 with Cell Wall Integrity

<div><p>The putative eukaryotic translation initiation factor 5A (eIF5A) is a highly conserved protein among archaea and eukaryotes that has recently been implicated in the elongation step of translation. eIF5A undergoes an essential and conserved posttranslational modification at a specific lysine to generate the residue hypusine. The enzymes deoxyhypusine synthase (Dys1) and deoxyhypusine hydroxylase (Lia1) catalyze this two-step modification process. Although several <i>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</i> eIF5A mutants have importantly contributed to the study of eIF5A function, no conditional mutant of Dys1 has been described so far. In this study, we generated and characterized the <i>dys1-1</i> mutant, which showed a strong depletion of mutated Dys1 protein, resulting in more than 2-fold decrease in hypusine levels relative to the wild type. The <i>dys1-1</i> mutant demonstrated a defect in total protein synthesis, a defect in polysome profile indicative of a translation elongation defect and a reduced association of eIF5A with polysomes. The growth phenotype of <i>dys1-1</i> mutant is severe, growing only in the presence of 1 M sorbitol, an osmotic stabilizer. Although this phenotype is characteristic of Pkc1 cell wall integrity mutants, the sorbitol requirement from <i>dys1-1</i> is not associated with cell lysis. We observed that the <i>dys1-1</i> genetically interacts with the sole yeast protein kinase C (Pkc1) and Asc1, a component of the 40S ribosomal subunit. The <i>dys1-1</i> mutant was synthetically lethal in combination with <i>asc1Δ</i> and overexpression of <i>TIF51A</i> (eIF5A) or <i>DYS1</i> is toxic for an <i>asc1Δ</i> strain. Moreover, eIF5A is more associated with translating ribosomes in the absence of Asc1 in the cell. Finally, analysis of the sensitivity to cell wall-perturbing compounds revealed a more similar behavior of the <i>dys1-1</i> and <i>asc1Δ</i> mutants in comparison with the <i>pkc1Δ</i> mutant. These data suggest a correlated role for eIF5A and Asc1 in coordinating the translational control of a subset of mRNAs associated with cell integrity.</p> </div

Yeast strains used in this study.

<p>Yeast strains used in this study.</p

The Dys1, Asc1 and Pkc1 mutants showed a distinguished sensitivity to compounds affecting cytoplasmic membrane and cell wall integrity.

<p>(A) The strains were plated onto medium supplemented with the indicated drugs and grown at 25°C for 3 days. (B) The growth was measured relative to each respective isogenic wild type strain (100%).</p

Genetic interaction between Dys1 and Asc1 is related to Asc1 binding to the 40S ribosome subunit.

<p>The indicated strains were plated onto medium not containing or containing 5-FOA and grown at 25°C for 3 days for plasmid shuffle.</p

The <i>dys1-1</i> mutant reveals a drastic reduction in Dys1 protein levels resulting in a reduction in hypusine-containing eIF5A.

<p>(A) Determination of mutant Dys1 protein levels. Wild type and <i>dys1-1</i> mutant strains were grown to mid-log phase at the permissive temperature in YPD medium containing 1 M sorbitol. The cells were lysed and 10 µg of total protein were blotted with the indicated antibodies. Samples were probed for eEF2 as a loading control. (B) Detection of hypusine-containing eIF5A of wild type and <i>dys1-1</i> mutant strains. Total eIF5A was immunoprecipitated and subjected to SDS-PAGE. Hypusine-containing eIF5A was revealed by autoradiography. (C) Quantification of relative hypusination levels after analysis of hypusine-containing versus total eIF5A, comparing the <i>dys1-1</i> mutant with the wild type (<i>DYS1</i>) and expressed the quantification as percent of wild type.</p

The reduction in hypusine formation in <i>dys1-1</i> mutant results in a reduction in total protein synthesis, and the polysome profile is characteristic of translation elongation defects.

<p>(A) The indicated strains were grown to mid-log phase, as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0060140#pone-0060140-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1B</a> and radiolabeled [³H]leucine was added to the medium. The incorporation of [³H]leucine into total proteins was measured as described in the <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0060140#s4" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a>. (B) Whole cell extracts (WCE) of the indicated strains were fractionated through centrifugation in a sucrose density gradient. Optical scans (OD_254nm) of the gradients are shown. The areas of the 80S and polysome peaks were compared to calculate the P/M ratio. The polysome profile fractions and the WCE were collected and blotted against the indicated antibodies. (C) Quantification of the ribosome-bound eIF5A relative to the amount of ribosomes (normalized by ribosomal protein L5) in the polysome profile fractions. The values obtained with the wild type strain were considered as 100% and those obtained with mutant strains were expressed as percentages of the wild type in the bar graphs.</p

The <i>dys1-1</i> mutant shows a severe growth defect that is not associated with cell lysis.

<p>(A) Serial dilutions of the wild type and <i>dys1-1</i> mutant strains were plated onto YPD medium in the presence or absence of 1 M sorbitol at the indicated temperatures. (B) Growth curves of the wild type and <i>dys1-1</i> mutant strains. The strains were grown at 25°C in YPD medium containing 1 M sorbitol, and the cell numbers were counted to monitor the 16- h growth rate. (C) The cells were grown as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0060140#pone-0060140-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1B</a>, to mid-log phase, treated with methylene blue and counted to analyze the cell lysis. The quantification is shown relative to the wild type (100%). (D) Sensitivity to zymolyase. The cells were grown as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0060140#pone-0060140-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1C</a> and treated with zymolyase. The turbidity was measured at the indicated time points after the cells were treated with SDS.</p