Evaluación de hidrolizados de granos de sorgo y granos de destilería secos con solubles para la producción de transglutaminasa microbiana

Sorghum grains can be used as a source of fermentable sugars to reduce the culture media cost for microbial growth of Streptomyces and the production of microbial transglutaminase (MTGase). In the production of ethanol from corn, dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGSs) are generated as waste. The aim of this work is to elucidate the biotechnological production of transglutaminase by Streptomyces mobaraensis NRRL-3191 grown in a medium containing sorghum grains hydrolysates and DDGS is feasible. The results showed that casein has a great effect on the production of MTGase while DDGS did not show any significant effect on the range of study. The model obtained predicts 0.66 U/mL of MTGase activity using enzymatic hydrolysates of sorghum grains supplemented with yeast extract (2 g/L), DDGS (2 g/L), and casein (19.5 g/L)Los granos de sorgo se pueden utilizar como fuente de azúcares fermentables para reducir los costes de medios de cultivo para el crecimiento microbiano de Streptomyces y la producción de transglutaminasa microbiana (MTGasa). En la producción de etanol a partir de maíz, se generan como residuos granos de destilería secos con solubles (DDGS). El objetivo de este trabajo fue determinar si la producción biotecnológica de transglutaminasa por Streptomyces mobaraensis NRRL-3191 cultivados en un medio que contiene hidrolizados de granos de sorgo y DDGS es factible. Los resultados mostraron que la caseína tiene un gran efecto en la producción de MTGasa mientras que DDGS no mostraron un efecto significativo en el intervalo de estudio. El modelo obtenido predice 0.66 U/mL de actividad MTGase usando hidrolizados enzimáticos de granos de sorgo suplementados con extracto de levadura (2 g/L), DDGS (2 g/L) y caseína (19,5 g/L)A scholarship from CONACyT and IPN (Mexico) to G. C. Rodríguez-Castillejos is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are grateful for the financial support from the co-ordinator of Fundación Produce A.C.S

Mycorrhiza induced resistance against pests: from the lab to the field

1 página - Conferencia invitada presentada en Iberian Plant Biology 2023. XVIII Portuguese-Spanish Congress on Plant Biology and the XXV Meeting of the Spanish Society of Plant Biology. 9-12 Julio 2023, Braga, PortugalArbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can prime plant defences increasing their resistance against pathogens and insect herbivores. Using tomato as a model, we have shown that inoculation with different AMF reduces the performance of the chewing herbivore Spodoptera exigua and the leaf miner Tuta absoluta. Transcriptomic and metabolomics analyses revealed that this Mycorrhiza Induced Resistance (MIR) is associated to boosted activation of plant direct and indirect defences in response to the attackers. We found primed accumulation in attacked leaves of antiherbivore metabolites, including alkaloids and polyamine conjugates, and functional analyses demonstrated that some of the identified compounds significantly inhibit herbivore development. In addition, the symbiosis altered the volatile blends released by the plant, and enhanced the attraction of natural enemies of the pests (Nesidiocoris tenuis, commonly used in biocontrol programs). Finally, networks analyses allowed the identification of key regulators of the primed response within the jasmonic acid and ethylene signalling pathways. Despite the many studies showing induced resistance by microorganisms in different plant‐pest systems, the variability in the protection achieved under agronomic settings is hindering the application of this strategy in agriculture. Plant‐microbe‐herbivore interactions are highly context dependent, with multiple biotic and abiotic factors influencing the final output. Identifying such factors is essential to optimize the application of microbial inoculants for crop protection in agriculture. We found that the plant genotype and nutrient availability are important drivers of the context dependency of MIR in tomato. Despite of the variability, comparisons across different experimental scales, from controlled lab set‐ups to commercial production conditions, confirmed that MIR can be achieved under crop production conditions and is compatible with other biocontrol methods. Accordingly, MIR can be a relevant addition to current Integrated Pest Management Programs

Alimentos funcionales, alfalfa y fitoestrógenos

Functional food development has been increased during the last years due to the population interest in foods that have not only a nutritional function but a health benefit as well reducing the risk of suffering several diseases. Alfalfa has been intended as cattle feed, although several investigations have reported that alfalfa contains bioactive compounds –phytochemicals- proteins with an estrogenic effect, and antimicrobial and antioxidant compounds, being classified as a functional food with protection against cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular and other diseases. The aim of the present study is to offer a general information outline, through a bibliographic review, of functional foods status, focusing on alfalfa and its phytochemicals (phytoestrogens), compounds that give it its functional food character and its adverse effects shown in the reproductive system of experimental animals as well. Such dichotomy between adverse and beneficial effects is the sign that shows that it is needed more information and more studies to be done in order to establish the effect of phytoestrogens in the development and reproductive function in animals, its agonistic and antagonistic effect and risk-benefit balance in its consumption.El desarrollo de alimentos funcionales en los últimos años ha ido en aumento debido principalmente, al interés de la población por alimentos que no solo cumplan con la función nutricional sino también por que tengan un efecto benéfico en salud reduciendo así el riesgo a padecer diversas enfermedades. La alfalfa ha sido generalmente un alimento destinado para la alimentación del ganado, sin embargo, en diversas investigaciones alrededor del mundo se ha reportado que contiene compuestos bioactivos –fitoquímicos– y proteínas con efecto estrogénico, antimicrobiano y antioxidante, así como también protector contra enfermedades cardiovasculares, cáncer y diabetes, entre otras, clasificándola potencialmente como un alimento funcional. El presente documento tiene como objetivo dar un bosquejo general informativo a través de la búsqueda y revisión bibliográfica acerca de los alimentos funcionales y en especial de la alfalfa y constituyentes fitoquímicos (fitoestrógenos) que la ubican dentro de este grupo de alimentos; así como los hallazgos que se han reportado como efectos adversos en animales experimentales específicamente en el aparato reproductivo debido al consumo de este tipo de fitocompuestos. Esta dicotomía entre los efectos adversos y benéficos no es más que la señalización de que aún falta mucha más información y estudios que realizar respecto al resultado que pueden tener los fitoestrógenos en el desarrollo y función reproductiva de animales, el agonismo y antagonismo de su efecto así como la concordancia en el riesgo-beneficio de su consumo

Building a Gold Standard Dataset to Identify Articles About Geographic Information Science

To know the overall regional or international scientific production is of vital importance to many areas of knowledge. Nevertheless, in interdisciplinary areas such as Geographic Information Science (GISc) it is not enough to just count papers published in specific journals. Most of them, as is the case of the International Journal of Remote Sensing (IJRS), welcome GISc papers but are not exclusive to that area so the production assignable to authors in the region must consider not only affiliation but also whether or not each paper falls into the theme of GISc. IJRS publishes far more papers than any other GISc journal, so it is important to assess quantitatively how many of them are of GISc. In this work, a representative sample of IJRS articles published over a period of almost 30 years was analyzed using a specific GISc definition. With these data, a manual classification methodology through a set of experts was carried out, and a dataset was built, analyzed, and statistically tested. As a result we estimate that between 47 and 76% of the IJRS articles can be considered from GISc, with a confidence level of 95%. Aside from the primary goal, this set could be used as a gold standard for future classification tasks. It constitutes the first GISc dataset of this kind, that may be used to train artificial intelligence systems capable of performing the same classification automatically and in a massive way. A similar procedure could be applied to other interdisciplinary fields of knowledge as well

Older people facing COVID-19: demographic trends and policy actions

El impacto de la pandemia de COVID-19 en la población de los países de América Latina (AL) depende en gran medida de las acciones de política pública (en general) y de salud (en particular) que los gobiernos hayan adoptado para frenar su avance y efectos. Especial atención merecen las personas mayores como grupo demográfico de más vulnerabilidad frente a esta enfermedad infecciosa. Así, este trabajo tiene dos objetivos: primero, examinar la tendencia de COVID-19 a partir de los casos confirmados y la mortalidad por esa causa entre personas adultas mayores de una selección de países de AL (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, México y Uruguay) junto con España; para luego destacar las acciones y políticas dirigidas a la atención de la población mayor en cada país durante la primera ola de la pandemia.The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the population of the countries of Latin America (LA) depends, to a large extent, on the public policies, and particularly on the health actions, that governments have adopted to confront the social and health crisis the pandemic has brought. Older people deserve special attention as one of the most vulnerable demographic groups to this infectious disease. The objec-tives of this work are: firstly, to examine the COVID-19 trend from confirmed cases and mortality due to this cause among older persons from a group of LA countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Uruguay) and Spain. Secondly, to explore actions and policies put in place in these countries to support older persons in particular, during the first wave of the pandemic.publishedVersionFil: Acosta, Laura Débora. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales; Argentina.Fil: Acosta, Laura Débora. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad; Argentina.Fil: Cardona Arango, Doris. Universidad Ces.; Colombia.Fil: Costa, José Vilton. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte; Brasil.Fil: Delgado, Alicia. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador; Ecuador.Fil: Freire, Flávio Henrique M. de A. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte; Brasil.Fil: Garay Villegas, Sagrario. Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León; México.Fil: Gómez León, Madelin. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya; España.Fil: Paredes Della Croce, Mariana. Universidad de la República; Uruguay.Fil: Peláez, Enrique. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales; Argentina.Fil: Peláez, Enrique. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudio sobre Cultura y Sociedad; Argentina.Fil: Peláez, Enrique. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Psicología; Argentina.Fil: Peláez, Enrique. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro de Investigaciones de la Facultad de Psicología; Argentina.Fil: Rodríguez Rodríguez, Vicente. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; España.Fil: Rojo Pérez, Fermina. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; España.Fil: Silva Ramírez, Rafael. University of Montreal; Canadá

Composition-Dependent Cytotoxic and Antibacterial Activity of Biopolymer-Capped Ag/Au Bimetallic Nanoparticles against Melanoma and Multidrug-Resistant Pathogens

Nanostructured silver (Ag) and gold (Au) are widely known to be potent biocidal and cytotoxic agents as well as biocompatible nanomaterials. It has been recently reported that combining both metals in a specific chemical composition causes a significant enhancement in their antibacterial activity against antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, as well as in their anticancer effects, while preserving cytocompatibility properties. In this work, Ag/Au bimetallic nanoparticles over a complete atomic chemical composition range were prepared at 10 at% through a green, highly reproducible, and simple approach using starch as a unique reducing and capping agent. The noble metal nanosystems were thoroughly characterized by different analytical techniques, including UV-visible and FT-IR spectroscopies, XRD, TEM/EDS, XPS and ICP-MS. Moreover, absorption spectra simulations for representative colloidal Ag/Au-NP samples were conducted using FDTD modelling. The antibacterial properties of the bimetallic nanoparticles were determined against multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, showing a clear dose-dependent inhibition even at the lowest concentration tested (5 µg/mL). Cytocompatibility assays showed a medium range of toxicity at low and intermediate concentrations (5 and 10 µg/mL), while triggering an anticancer behavior, even at the lowest concentration tested, in a process involving reactive oxygen species production per the nanoparticle Au:Ag ratio. In this manner, this study provides promising evidence that the presently fabricated Ag/Au-NPs should be further studied for a wide range of antibacterial and anticancer applications.The groups at CSIC and Tecnologico de Monterrey acknowledge the i-Link+2019 program (ref. LINKB20024 “NANOBIO-ROJA”) for financial support. AM acknowledges the Spanish Ministry of Science (RYC2018-024561-I), the regional government of Aragon (E13_20R), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (823717– ESTEEM3) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC- 21835002).Peer reviewe

Role of age and comorbidities in mortality of patients with infective endocarditis

[Purpose]: The aim of this study was to analyse the characteristics of patients with IE in three groups of age and to assess the ability of age and the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) to predict mortality. [Methods]: Prospective cohort study of all patients with IE included in the GAMES Spanish database between 2008 and 2015.Patients were stratified into three age groups:<65 years,65 to 80 years,and ≥ 80 years.The area under the receiver-operating characteristic (AUROC) curve was calculated to quantify the diagnostic accuracy of the CCI to predict mortality risk. [Results]: A total of 3120 patients with IE (1327 < 65 years;1291 65-80 years;502 ≥ 80 years) were enrolled.Fever and heart failure were the most common presentations of IE, with no differences among age groups.Patients ≥80 years who underwent surgery were significantly lower compared with other age groups (14.3%,65 years; 20.5%,65-79 years; 31.3%,≥80 years). In-hospital mortality was lower in the <65-year group (20.3%,<65 years;30.1%,65-79 years;34.7%,≥80 years;p < 0.001) as well as 1-year mortality (3.2%, <65 years; 5.5%, 65-80 years;7.6%,≥80 years; p = 0.003).Independent predictors of mortality were age ≥ 80 years (hazard ratio [HR]:2.78;95% confidence interval [CI]:2.32–3.34), CCI ≥ 3 (HR:1.62; 95% CI:1.39–1.88),and non-performed surgery (HR:1.64;95% CI:11.16–1.58).When the three age groups were compared,the AUROC curve for CCI was significantly larger for patients aged <65 years(p < 0.001) for both in-hospital and 1-year mortality. [Conclusion]: There were no differences in the clinical presentation of IE between the groups. Age ≥ 80 years, high comorbidity (measured by CCI),and non-performance of surgery were independent predictors of mortality in patients with IE.CCI could help to identify those patients with IE and surgical indication who present a lower risk of in-hospital and 1-year mortality after surgery, especially in the <65-year group

Effectiveness of an intervention for improving drug prescription in primary care patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy:Study protocol of a cluster randomized clinical trial (Multi-PAP project)

This study was funded by the Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias ISCIII (Grant Numbers PI15/00276, PI15/00572, PI15/00996), REDISSEC (Project Numbers RD12/0001/0012, RD16/0001/0005), and the European Regional Development Fund ("A way to build Europe").Background: Multimorbidity is associated with negative effects both on people's health and on healthcare systems. A key problem linked to multimorbidity is polypharmacy, which in turn is associated with increased risk of partly preventable adverse effects, including mortality. The Ariadne principles describe a model of care based on a thorough assessment of diseases, treatments (and potential interactions), clinical status, context and preferences of patients with multimorbidity, with the aim of prioritizing and sharing realistic treatment goals that guide an individualized management. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a complex intervention that implements the Ariadne principles in a population of young-old patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy. The intervention seeks to improve the appropriateness of prescribing in primary care (PC), as measured by the medication appropriateness index (MAI) score at 6 and 12months, as compared with usual care. Methods/Design: Design:pragmatic cluster randomized clinical trial. Unit of randomization: family physician (FP). Unit of analysis: patient. Scope: PC health centres in three autonomous communities: Aragon, Madrid, and Andalusia (Spain). Population: patients aged 65-74years with multimorbidity (≥3 chronic diseases) and polypharmacy (≥5 drugs prescribed in ≥3months). Sample size: n=400 (200 per study arm). Intervention: complex intervention based on the implementation of the Ariadne principles with two components: (1) FP training and (2) FP-patient interview. Outcomes: MAI score, health services use, quality of life (Euroqol 5D-5L), pharmacotherapy and adherence to treatment (Morisky-Green, Haynes-Sackett), and clinical and socio-demographic variables. Statistical analysis: primary outcome is the difference in MAI score between T0 and T1 and corresponding 95% confidence interval. Adjustment for confounding factors will be performed by multilevel analysis. All analyses will be carried out in accordance with the intention-to-treat principle. Discussion: It is essential to provide evidence concerning interventions on PC patients with polypharmacy and multimorbidity, conducted in the context of routine clinical practice, and involving young-old patients with significant potential for preventing negative health outcomes. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02866799Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

MAREJADAS RURALES Y LUCHAS POR LA VIDA, VOL. II: CONFLICTOS SOCIOTERRITORIALES Y POR RECURSOS NATURALES

Volumen 2. Conflictos socioterritoriales y por recursos naturales, coordinado por: Rosalía López Paniagua, Dante Ariel Ayala Ortiz y Armando Contreras Hernández, constituido por 19 trabajos, divididos en tres secciones. La primera titulada Tierra: tenencia y cultivos transgénicos, contiene 6 trabajos, que abordan el persistente conflicto por la tenencia de la tierra y la producción de soya y maíz transgénico y la asociada acumulación del capital por despojo que caracteriza la agricultura transgénica en México, pero también formas de resistencia como la denuncia de contaminación transgénica en la Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca y las instituciones, actores y gestión en la Reserva de la Biósfera El Triunfo en la Sierra Madre de Chiapas. La segunda sección: Territorio: Explotación y envenenamiento, está compuesta por 5 trabajos que hacen referencia a los conflictos socioambientales derivados de la minería en manos de empresas nacionales y extranjeras omisas y gobiernos cómplices de las consecuencias depredadoras que generan en territorios campesinos e indígenas, debido a su asociación con el narcotráfico y por la contaminación del agua y la tierra que provocan, además de las consecuencias perversas en la salud humana y el entorno natural en diversas regiones del país. En la tercera y última sección, Agua: contaminación y escases, los 8 trabajos que la integran, analizan los conflictos socioterritoriales y luchas por la vida, en diversos estados del país. Se trata de investigaciones que estudian movimientos y conflictos sociales actuales en el campo mexicano, como son las luchas por la defensa del territorio y la defensa de la naturaleza, trabajos que abordan especialmente las disputas por el agua, y los problemas asociados del acceso, la escasez y la contaminación, no solo internos sino con empresas y con el Estado mismo que con la aprobación y aplicación de leyes y reglamentos, el despojo a los campesinos de su territorio en el que han trabajado y vivido por generaciones.INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y RURALES (ICAR), UNIVERSIDAD DE GUADALAJARA, EL COLEGIO DE MICHOACÁN A.C., FACULTAD DE ESTUDIOS SUPERIORES ACATLÁN-UNAM, ECOSUR, CUCOSTA SUR GRANA, ASOCIACIÓN MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS RURALES A.C