Antoni Ballester i Nolla (16 May 1920-15 February 2017)

2 pages, 2 figuresOn 15 February 2017, the Catalan chemist Antoni Ballester i Nolla left us after a long illness. Born in Mont-Roig del Camp in 1920, he moved to Barcelona in the 1930s when his father, a state school teacher, was posted to the capital. A man committed to free-dom, Ballester volunteered at the age of 17 to defend the Spanish Republic against fascist aggression. He suffered the shameful refugee camps in the south of France until he was able to return to Barcelona. At the end of the Spanish civil war, he obtained a doctorate in Chemistry and Biological Sciences with an excellent cum laude mark for his doctoral thesis. His fondness for learning and his curiosity about the behaviour of natural phenomena led him to closely observe these processes from a very young age. At the age of 10, he published his first article in a local newspaper in Reus under the title An abnormal July, in which he considered why it was cold in the middle of summer. He married Assumpció, a biologist and had a son, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildrenPeer reviewe

Structural and RNAi characterization of the German cockroach lipophorin receptor, and the evolutionary relationships of lipoprotein receptors

This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2199/8/53[Background] Lipophorin receptors (LpRs) have been described in a number of insects, but functional studies have been reported only in locusts and mosquitoes. The aim of the present work was to characterize the LpR of the cockroach Blattella germanica, not only molecularly but also functionally using RNAi techniques, and to place LpRs in a phylogenetical context among lipoprotein receptors.[Results] We cloned a putative LpR from B. germanica (BgLpR) using RT-PCR methods. Two isoforms of BgLpR that differ from each other by an insertion/deletion of 24 amino acids were obtained from the fat body and the ovary. A phylogenetical analysis of lipoprotein receptors showed that BgLpR grouped with other sequences annotated as LpR in a cluster placed as a sister group of vertebrate low density lipoprotein receptors (LDLR) + lipoprotein receptor-related proteins 8 (LPR8) + vitellogenin receptors (VgR) + very low density lipoprotein receptors (VLDLR). The two BgLpR isoforms are expressed in different adult female tissues (fat body, ovary, brain, midgut, muscle) and in embryos. In ovaries and fat body, the two isoforms are similarly expressed during the first gonadotrophic cycle. mRNA levels in the fat body increase in parallel to vitellogenesis, whereas they decrease in the ovaries. BgLpR protein levels increase in parallel to vitellogenesis in both organs. Treatment with juvenile hormone increases BgLpR protein. RNAi experiments show that females with lower BgLpR expression have less lipophorin in the growing oocytes with respect to controls.[Conclusion] The two isoforms of BgLpR are structurally similar to other LpRs. Phylogenetical analyses show that LpRs and the group formed by vertebrate LDLR + LPR8 + VgR + VLDLR, diverged from a common ancestor and diversified in parallel. The different expression patterns in the fat body and the ovary, comparing mRNA and protein, indicate that the corresponding mechanisms regulating BgLpR expression are different. Experiments with JH III suggest that such a hormone regulates the expression of BgLpR posttranscriptionally. RNAi experiments indicate that BgLpR is a functional lipophorin receptor.Financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science, Spain (projects BOS2002-03359, BFU2005-00264, AGL2002-01169, AGL2005- 00773) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2001 SGR 003245) is gratefully acknowledged. L.C. is recipient of pre-doctoral research grants (I3P) from CSIC. We thank Prof. Coby Schal (North Carolina State University) for generous gifts of anti-lipophorin antibody.Peer reviewe

Identifying genes related to choriogenesis in insect panoistic ovaries by Suppression Subtractive Hybridization

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Insect ovarioles are classified into two categories: panoistic and meroistic, the later having apparently evolved from an ancestral panoistic type. Molecular data on oogenesis is practically restricted to meroistic ovaries. If we aim at studying the evolutionary transition from panoistic to meroistic, data on panoistic ovaries should be gathered. To this end, we planned the construction of a Suppression Subtractive Hybridization (SSH) library to identify genes involved in panoistic choriogenesis, using the cockroach <it>Blattella germanica </it>as model.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We constructed a post-vitellogenic ovary library by SSH to isolate genes involved in choriogenesis in <it>B. germanica</it>. The tester library was prepared with an ovary pool from 6- to 7-day-old females, whereas the driver library was prepared with an ovary pool from 3- to 4-day-old females. From the SSH library, we obtained 258 high quality sequences which clustered into 34 unique sequences grouped in 19 contigs and 15 singlets. The sequences were compared against non-redundant NCBI databases using BLAST. We found that 44% of the unique sequences had homologous sequences in known genes of other organisms, whereas 56% had no significant similarity to any of the databases entries. A Gene Ontology analysis was carried out, classifying the 34 sequences into different functional categories. Seven of these gene sequences, representative of different categories and processes, were chosen to perform expression studies during the first gonadotrophic cycle by real-time PCR. Results showed that they were mainly expressed during post-vitellogenesis, which validates the SSH technique. In two of them corresponding to novel genes, we demonstrated that they are specifically expressed in the cytoplasm of follicular cells in basal oocytes at the time of choriogenesis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The SSH approach has proven to be useful in identifying ovarian genes expressed after vitellogenesis in <it>B. germanica</it>. For most of the genes, functions related to choriogenesis are postulated. The relatively high percentage of novel genes obtained and the practical absence of chorion genes typical of meroistic ovaries suggest that mechanisms regulating chorion formation in panoistic ovaries are significantly different from those of meroistic ones.</p

Emergency care usage and longevity have opposite effects on health insurance rates

Purpose: To study the price of health insurance for individuals aged 65 years and over. Methodology: A sample of private health policyholders in Spain is analysed. Joint models are estimated for men and women, separately. A log-linear model of the transformed cumulated number of claims associated with emergency room occupation, ambulance use and hospitalization is estimated, together with a proportional hazard survival model. Findings: The association between the longitudinal process of severe medical care and the survival time process is positive and highly significant for both men and women. An increase in the price of health insurance due to the effect of a larger number of emergency care demand events is slightly offset by the decrease in expected longevity. Practical implications: The effect of an increase in the number of claims is small compared to the reduction in survival, so age still plays a central role in rate making. Originality: The proposed methodology allows dynamic rates to be designed, so that the price of health insurance can change as new usage information becomes available

La Marató de TV3 financiarà un projecte del Centre de Visió per Computador de la UAB

La Dra. Petia Radeva, del Centre de Visió per Computador i de la Universitat de Barcelona, conjuntament amb el Dr. Manel Sabaté Tenas del Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau i la Dra Rosana Hernández Antolín del Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, han rebut l'ajut que atorga la Fundació de la Marató de TV3 2007 per a projectes de recerca sobre malalties cardiovasculars. "Oclusions totals cròniques d'artèries coronàries d'humans: des de la fisiopatologia a les implicacions clíniques de la recanalització amb èxit mitjançant intervenció coronària percutània" és el títol del projecte, i el seu finançament està valorat en 327.680 €.La Dra. Petia Radeva, del Centro de Visión por Computador y de la Universidad de Barcelona, conjuntamente con el Dr. Manel Sabaté Tenas del Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau y la Dra Rosana Hernández Antolín del Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, han recibido la ayuda que otorga la Fundación de la Maratón de TV3 2007 para proyectos de investigación sobre enfermedades cardiovasculares

A joint longitudinal and survival model with health care usage for insured elderly

We study longevity and usage of medical resources of a sample of individuals aged 65 years or more who are covered by a private insurance policy. A longitudinal analysis is presented, where the yearly cumulative number of medical coverage requests by each subject characterizes insurance intensity of care until death. We confirm that there is a significant correlation between the longitudinal data on usage level and the survival time processes. We obtain dynamic estimations of event probabilities and we exploit the potential of joint models for personalized survival curve adjustment

Joint models for longitudinal counts and left-truncated time-to-event data with applications to health insurance

Aging societies have given rise to important challenges in the field of health insurance. Elderly policyholders need to be provided with fair premiums based on their individual health status, whereas insurance companies want to plan for the potential costs of tackling lifetimes above mean expectations. In this article, we focus on a large cohort of policyholders in Barcelona (Spain), aged 65 years and over. A shared-parameter joint model is proposed to analyse the relationship between annual demand for emergency claims and time until death outcomes, which are subject to left truncation. We compare different functional forms of the association between both processes, and, furthermore, we illustrate how the fitted model provides time-dynamic predictions of survival probabilities. The parameter estimation is performed under the Bayesian framework using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods