Encapsulation of gold nanostructures and oil-in-water nanocarriers in microgels with biomedical potential

Indexación: Scopus.Funding: This research was funded by FONDECYT 1161450, 1150744, 11130494 and 1170929, FONDEQUIP EQM160157, EQM170111, CONICYT-FONDAP 15130011, and CONICYT PhD Scholarship 21141137.Here we report the incorporation of gold nanostructures (nanospheres or nanorods, functionalized with carboxylate-end PEG) and curcumin oil-in-water (O/W) nanoemulsions (CurNem) into alginate microgels using the dripping technique. While gold nanostructures are promising nanomaterials for photothermal therapy applications, CurNem possess important pharmacological activities as reported here. In this sense, we evaluated the effect of CurNem on cell viability of both cancerous and non-cancerous cell lines (AGS and HEK293T, respectively), demonstrating preferential toxicity in cancer cells and safety for the non-cancerous cells. After incorporating gold nanostructures and CurNem together into the microgels, microstructures with diameters of 220 and 540 µm were obtained. When stimulating microgels with a laser, the plasmon effect promoted a significant rise in the temperature of the medium; the temperature increase was higher for those containing gold nanorods (11–12 ◦ C) than nanospheres (1–2 ◦ C). Interestingly, the incorporation of both nanosystems in the microgels maintains the photothermal properties of the gold nanostructures unmodified and retains with high efficiency the curcumin nanocarriers. We conclude that these results will be of interest to design hydrogel formulations with therapeutic applications. © 2018 by the authors.https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/5/120

Genetic and Genomic Approaches for Adaptation of Grapevine to Climate Change

The necessity to adapt to climate change is even stronger for grapevine than for other crops, because grape berry composition—a key determinant of fruit and wine quality, typicity and market value— highly depends on “terroir” (complete natural environment), on vintage (annual climate variability), and on their interactions. In the same time, there is a strong demand to reduce the use of pesticides. Thus, the equation that breeders and grape growers must solve has three entries that cannot be dissociated: adaptation to climate change, reduction of pesticides, and maintenance of wine typicity. Although vineyard management may cope to some extent to the short–medium-term effects of climate change, genetic improvement is necessary to provide long-term sustainable solutions to these problems. Most vineyards over the world are planted using vines that harbor two grafted plants’ genomes. Although this makes the range of interactions (scion-atmosphere, rootstock-soil, scion-rootstock) more complex, it also opens up wider possibilities for the genetic improvement of either or both the grafted genotypes. Positive aspects related to grapevine breeding are as follows: (a) a wide genetic diversity of rootstocks and scions that has not been thoroughly explored yet; (b) progress in sequencing technologies that allows high-throughput sequencing of entire genomes, faster mapping of targeted traits and easier determination of genetic relationships; (c) progress in new breeding technologies that potentially permit precise modifications on resident genes; (d) automation of phenotyping that allows faster and more complete monitoring of many traits on relatively large plant populations; (e) functional characterization of an increasing number of genes involved in the control of development, berry metabolism, disease resistance, and adaptation to environment. Difficulties involve: (a) the perennial nature and the large size of the plant that makes field testing long and demanding in manpower; (b) the low efficiency of transformation, regeneration and small size of breeding populations; (c) the complexity of the adaptive traits and the need to define more clearly future ideotypes; (d) the lack of shared and integrative platforms allowing a complete appraisal of the genotype-phenotype-environmental links; (e) legal, market and consumer acceptance of new genotypes. The present chapter provides an overview of suitable strategies and challenges linked to the adaptation of viticulture to a changing environment