Properties of biopolymer dispersions and films used as carriers of the biocontrol agent Candida sake CPA-1

[EN] The use of biocontrol agents (BCA) for controlling plant diseases is an alternative to reduce the use of pesticides. Their performance can be improved when applied in combination with coatings. Films and coatings formulated from different biopolymers were characterized as to their barrier and optical properties to analyse their impact on fruit when applied as carriers of the BCA Candida sake CPA-1. The properties of the film-forming dispersions were more affected by the type of polymer than by the incorporation of surfactants. Sodium caseinate formed the thickest coatings, but these were very thin in every case, which led to there being no predicted relevant effect on the gas exchanges of the fruit. The cell viability in the films was good during film drying, especially in the case of protein films; however, it decreased after storage.The authors are grateful to the Spanish Government for the financial support through project RTA2012-00067-0O2 and to the Conselleria d'Educacio of the Generalitat Valenciana, (Spain) for A. Marin's PhD grant (VALi+d 2013). The authors are also thankful to IRTA group, headed by Dra. Neus Teixido, for their assistance in the microbiological study.Marín-Gozalbo, A.; Atarés Huerta, LM.; Cháfer Nácher, MT.; Chiralt, A. (2017). Properties of biopolymer dispersions and films used as carriers of the biocontrol agent Candida sake CPA-1. LWT - Food Science and Technology. 79:60-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2017.01.024S60697

Gene expression atlas of fruit ripening and transcriptome assembly from RNA-seq data in octoploid strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa)

RNA-seq has been used to perform global expression analysis of the achene and the receptacle at four stages of fruit ripening, and of the roots and leaves of strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa). About 967 million reads and 191 Gb of sequence were produced, using Illumina sequencing. Mapping the reads in the related genome of the wild diploid Fragaria vesca revealed differences between the achene and receptacle development program, and reinforced the role played by ethylene in the ripening receptacle. For the strawberry transcriptome assembly, a de novo strategy was followed, generating separate assemblies for each of the ten tissues and stages sampled. The Trinity program was used for these assemblies, resulting in over 1.4 M isoforms. Filtering by a threshold of 0.3 FPKM, and doing Blastx (E-value < 1 e-30) against the UniProt database of plants reduced the number to 472,476 isoforms. Their assembly with the MIRA program (90% homology) resulted in 26,087 contigs. From these, 91.34 percent showed high homology to Fragaria vesca genes and 87.30 percent Fragaria iinumae (BlastN E-value < 1 e-100). Mapping back the reads on the MIRA contigs identified polymorphisms at nucleotide level, using FREEBAYES, as well as estimate their relative abundance in each sample

Analysis of SNP-SNP interactions and bone quantitative ultrasound parameter in early adulthood

Background: Osteoporosis individual susceptibility is determined by the interaction of multiple genetic variants and environmental factors. The aim of this study was to conduct SNP-SNP interaction analyses in candidate genes influencing heel quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parameter in early adulthood to identify novel insights into the mechanism of disease. Methods: The study population included 575 healthy subjects (mean age 20.41; SD 2.36). To assess bone mass QUS was performed to determine Broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA, dB/MHz). A total of 32 SNPs mapping to loci that have been characterized as genetic markers for QUS and/or BMD parameters were selected as genetic markers in this study. The association of all possible SNP pairs with QUS was assessed by linear regression and a SNP-SNP interaction was defined as a significant departure from additive effects. Results: The pairwise SNP-SNP analysis showed multiple interactions. The interaction comprising SNPs rs9340799 and rs3736228 that map in the ESR1 and LRP5 genes respectively, revealed the lowest p value after adjusting for confounding factors (p-value = 0.001, β (95% CI) = 14.289 (5.548, 23.029). In addition, our model reported others such as TMEM135-WNT16 (p = 0.007, β(95%CI) = 9.101 (2.498, 15.704), ESR1-DKK1 (p = 0.012, β(95%CI) = 13.641 (2. 959, 24.322) or OPG-LRP5 (p = 0.012, β(95%CI) = 8.724 (1.936, 15.512). However, none of the detected interactions remain significant considering the Bonferroni significance threshold for multiple testing (p<0.0001). Conclusion: Our analysis of SNP-SNP interaction in candidate genes of QUS in Caucasian young adults reveal several interactions, especially between ESR1 and LRP5 genes, that did not reach statistical significance. Although our results do not support a relevant genetic contribution of SNP-SNP epistatic interactions to QUS in young adults, further studies in larger independent populations would be necessary to support these preliminary findings.This study was supported by a grant PI-0414-2014 from Consejería de Salud (Junta de Andalucía, Spain). Correa-Rodríguez M is a predoctoral fellow (FPU13/ 00143) from the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Programa de Formación del Profesorado Universitario)

A homologue of the Parkinson's disease-associated protein LRRK2 undergoes a monomer-dimer transition during GTP turnover.

Mutations in LRRK2 are a common cause of genetic Parkinson's disease (PD). LRRK2 is a multi-domain Roco protein, harbouring kinase and GTPase activity. In analogy with a bacterial homologue, LRRK2 was proposed to act as a GTPase activated by dimerization (GAD), while recent reports suggest LRRK2 to exist under a monomeric and dimeric form in vivo. It is however unknown how LRRK2 oligomerization is regulated. Here, we show that oligomerization of a homologous bacterial Roco protein depends on the nucleotide load. The protein is mainly dimeric in the nucleotide-free and GDP-bound states, while it forms monomers upon GTP binding, leading to a monomer-dimer cycle during GTP hydrolysis. An analogue of a PD-associated mutation stabilizes the dimer and decreases the GTPase activity. This work thus provides insights into the conformational cycle of Roco proteins and suggests a link between oligomerization and disease-associated mutations in LRRK2

Discovery of a stellar overdensity in Eridanus-Phoenix in the Dark Energy Survey

We report the discovery of an excess of main-sequence turnoff stars in the direction of the constellations of Eridanus and Phoenix from the first-year data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The Eridanus-Phoenix (EriPhe) overdensity is centered around l˜ 285^\circ and b˜ -60^\circ and spans at least 30° in longitude and 10° in latitude. The Poisson significance of the detection is at least 9sigma . The stellar population in the overdense region is similar in brightness and color to that of the nearby globular cluster NGC 1261, indicating that the heliocentric distance of EriPhe is about d˜ 16 {{kpc}}. The extent of EriPhe in projection is therefore at least ˜4 kpc by ˜3 kpc. On the sky, this overdensity is located between NGC 1261 and a new stellar stream discovered by DES at a similar heliocentric distance, the so-called Phoenix Stream. Given their similar distance and proximity to each other, it is possible that these three structures may be kinematically associated. Alternatively, the EriPhe overdensity is morphologically similar to the Virgo overdensity and the Hercules-Aquila cloud, which also lie at a similar Galactocentric distance. These three overdensities lie along a polar plane separated by ˜120° and may share a common origin. Spectroscopic follow-up observations of the stars in EriPhe are required to fully understand the nature of this overdensity

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research

CIBERER: Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

13 páginas,1 figura, 3 tablas, 1 apéndice. Se extraen los autores pertenecientes a The CIBERER network que trabajan en Centros del CSIC del Appendix ACIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research.This study has been funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and Spanish Ministry of Science and InnovationPeer reviewe

Colombian consensus recommendations for diagnosis, management and treatment of the infection by SARS-COV-2/ COVID-19 in health care facilities - Recommendations from expert´s group based and informed on evidence

La Asociación Colombiana de Infectología (ACIN) y el Instituto de Evaluación de Nuevas Tecnologías de la Salud (IETS) conformó un grupo de trabajo para desarrollar recomendaciones informadas y basadas en evidencia, por consenso de expertos para la atención, diagnóstico y manejo de casos de Covid 19. Estas guías son dirigidas al personal de salud y buscar dar recomendaciones en los ámbitos de la atención en salud de los casos de Covid-19, en el contexto nacional de Colombia