Metagenome Sequencing of Prokaryotic Microbiota from Two Hypersaline Soils of the Odiel Salt Marshes in Huelva, Southwestern Spain

Two 454 shotgun metagenomes were sequenced from hypersaline soil samples collected in the Odiel salt marsh area in Huelva, southwestern Spain. Analysis of contigs and 16S rRNA-related sequences showed that Halobacteria, Balneolaeota, and Bacteroidetes were the dominant groups. Rhodothermaeota and Nanohaloarchaeota were also abundant.España, MINECO CGL2013-46941-P CGL2017-83385-

Effect of pH on the production of hydrolytic enzymes of industrial interest by Bacillus licheniformis using sewage sludge as a low-cost culture médium

Management of sewage sludge has become a topic of increasing importance. This is because the treatment and final destination of these wastes are not growing at the same rate at which generated what is necessary to add the limited storage capacity of wastewater treatment plants or waste transfer centers. Current policies of different governments aims, among others, promote proecological management of sewage sludge, replacing traditional methods by new methods that lead to their stabilization and safe recycling. These methods can lead to the recovery of valuable raw materials from potentially dangerous others in order to permit their use in agriculture, industry or energy production. Moreover, exists a great enzyme market, mainly those with hydrolytic activities such as proteases, lipases or cellulases. Although its use has many advantages, the competitiveness of the enzymes compared with chemicals is limited by its high production costs. The use of a less expensive culture media and the stimulation of the production of these enzymes can significantly reduce production costs. Therefore, the use of tertiary materials as alternative substrates, available in large quantities and at lower cost, is an interesting option. In this work we have studied the effect of pH on the fermentation of sewage sludge by Bacillus licheniformis, a hydrolytic enzymes producer microorganism, in order to obtain several products for specific agronomic applications

p53 Transactivation of the HIV-1 Long Terminal Repeat Is Blocked by PD 144795, a Calcineurin-Inhibitor with Anti-HIV Properties

Previous reports have indicated that benzothiophenes exhibit broad anti-inflammatory properties and inhibit human immunodeficiency virus-type 1 (HIV-1) replication. We show that the immunosuppressant cyclosporin A (CsA) and benzothiophene-2-carboxamide, 5-methoxy-3-(1-methyl ethoxy)-1-oxide (PD 144795) block the induction of p53 and NF-kappaB binding to the HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR) by the T cell receptor activator phytohemagglutinin. CsA and PD 144795 also inhibit the induction by phytohemagglutinin of the transcription mediated by an HIV-1 LTR fragment containing the p53 and NF-kappaB sites. These effects of PD 144795 on HIV-1 transcription correlate with its ability to inhibit the phosphatase activity of calcineurin and are similar to those previously described for CsA. Moreover, a constitutive active form of calcineurin is able to induce expression from the HIV-1 LTR in a p53- and NF-kappaB-dependent manner and PD 144795 is able to block this induction. These results demonstrate that the DNA binding of p53 to the HIV-1 LTR can be modulated by calcineurin and provide a framework to understand the anti-HIV properties of benzothiophene derivatives

Crowdsourcing and minority languages: the case of Galician inflected infinitives

Results from a crowdsourced audio questionnaire show that inflected infinitives in Galician are still acceptable in a broad range of contexts, different from those described for European Portuguese. Crucially, inflected infinitives with referential subjects are widely accepted only inside strong islands in Galician (complements of nouns, adjunct clauses). They are widely rejected in non-islands, notably in the complements of epistemic/factive verbs, in contrast with Portuguese and older varieties of Galician (Gondar 1978, Raposo 1987). Statistical analysis shows, however, that, in the complements of epistemic/factive (and desiderative) verbs, inflected infinitives are significantly more acceptable in instances of control, whether partial or exhaustive. In fact, there is no significant difference between these two types of control in Galician, unlike in Portuguese, where inflection is generally better in instances of partial control and is not acceptable in instances of exhaustive local subject control (Modesto 2010, Sheehan 2018). We propose an analysis of this pattern in terms of phase theory. The inflectional domain of non-finite clauses remains visible to the thematic domain of the next clause up, according to the less strict version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 2001), allowing control to take place. Pronouns/or pronominal inflections in the inflectional domain of visible non-finite clauses therefore get controlled. In islands, however, material in the inflectional domain remains free/referential. Despite this basic pattern, the data are characterized by substantial interspeaker variation. Statistical analysis shows that gender, urban/rural birthplace and mother tongue are all significant factors in this variation, while age and region of birth are not. Most notably, urban-born male bilinguals with Spanish as their mother tongue consistently rate the sentences higher on the Likert scale. Overall, the results show that crowdsourcing can lead to empirically robust syntactic descriptions of minority languages which are likely to be subject to substantial sociolinguistic variation and where judgements from a single social group may be misrepresentative of the general picture. The study also highlights, however, the challenges associated with using crowd-sourced audio-questionnaires of this kind in languages of this kind and the need for statistical analysis of results to control for substantial amounts of variation

Estrés oxidativo en leucocitos implicación de la nadph-oxidasa, de la calcineurina y de los factores de transcripción NF-kB y STAT 3

El objetivo general de esta Tesis ha sido estudiar el efecto del estrés oxidativo sobre diferentes sistemas de transducción de señales en células leucocíticas. Los objetivos específicos son los siguientes: ... ly: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt">1. En la primera parte de la misma, se analiza el efecto de un nuevo complejo, derivado del rutenio, sobre la activación del estallido respiratorio (producción de O2- y H2O2) en neutrófilos humanos. Esta actividad podría estar asociada con la capacidad citotóxica de algunos derivados de rutenio y con la infiltración de las células fagocíticas en los nódulos tumorales. 2. En segundo lugar, se ha analizado la caracterización de la actividad calcineurina (CN) en neutrófilos humanos:(i) Análisis de la presencia de la fosfatasa CN usando como sustrato un fosfopéptido sintético, correspondiente al sitio de fosforilación de la subunidad RII de la proteína quinasa dependiente de AMP cíclico.(ii) Estudio de la inhibición de esta actividad CN en neutrófilos tratados con drogas inmunosupresoras (ej. CsA y FK 506).(iii) Efecto de oxidantes sobre la actividad CN. Se han estudiado las alteraciones que podría producirse sobre la unión al ADN de factores de transcripción, tales como NF-AT y NF-kB.La conexión entre ambas señales, es decir, entre CN y radicales libres de oxígeno, es desconocida. En este trabajo nos centramos en esta cuestión y en las implicaciones de os radicales libres de oxígeno como mensajeros universales para activar al NF-kB.3. En la tercera parte, el objetivo ha sido el estudio de agentes oxidantes sobre la vía JAK-STAT. Se analiza el efecto del H2O2 y otras especies reactivas de oxígeno (reacción de Fenton) sobre uno de los miembros de esta familia, concretamente el STAT3.

Oxidative stress triggers STAT3 tyrosine phosphorylation and nuclear translocation in human lymphocytes

Oxidizing agents are powerful activators of factors responsible for the transcriptional activation of cytokine-encoding genes involved in tissue injury. In this study we show evidence that STAT3 is a transcription factor whose activity is modulated by H2O2 in human lymphocytes, in which endogenous catalase had previously been inhibited. H2O2-induced nuclear translocation of STAT3 to form sequence-specific DNA-bound complexes was evidenced by immunoblotting of nuclear fractions and electrophoretic mobility shift assays, and vanadate was found to strongly synergize with H2O2. Moreover, anti-STAT3 antibodies specifically precipitated a protein of 92 kDa that becomes phosphorylated on tyrosine upon lymphocyte treatment with H2O2. Phenylarsine oxide, a tyrosine phosphatase inhibitor, and genistein, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, cooperated and cancelled, respectively, the H2O2-promoted STAT3 nuclear translocation. Evidence is also presented, using Fe2+/Cu2+ ions, that ·OH generated from H2O2 through Fenton reactions could be a candidate oxygen reactive species to directly activate STAT3. Present data suggest that H2O2 and vanadate are likely to inhibit the activity of intracellular tyrosine phosphatase(s), leading to enhanced STAT3 tyrosine phosphorylation and hence its translocation to the nucleus. These results demonstrate that the DNA binding activity of STAT3 can be modulated by oxidizing agents and provide a framework to understand the effects of oxidative stress on the JAK-STAT signaling pathway.This work was supported by Fondo Investigaciones Sanitarias Grants 94/1484 and 97/1289 (to F. S.) and 97/207 (to J. C.), a grant from the Foundation of Sociedad Española Alergia Immunología Clínica of Spain (to J. M.), Grant SAF 96/0205 from the Dirección General Investigación Científica Técnica (to F. J. B.), a grant from Consejería Salud (Junta de Andalucıa) (to F. S.), and a grant from Innogenetis Diagnostica y Terapeutica S.A. from Spain