Glycemia Regulation: From Feedback Loops to Organizational Closure.

Endocrinologists apply the idea of feedback loops to explain how hormones regulate certain bodily functions such as glucose metabolism. In particular, feedback loops focus on the maintenance of the plasma concentrations of glucose within a narrow range. Here, we put forward a different, organicist perspective on the endocrine regulation of glycaemia, by relying on the pivotal concept of closure of constraints. From this perspective, biological systems are understood as organized ones, which means that they are constituted of a set of mutually dependent functional structures acting as constraints, whose maintenance depends on their reciprocal interactions. Closure refers specifically to the mutual dependence among functional constraints in an organism. We show that, when compared to feedback loops, organizational closure can generate much richer descriptions of the processes and constraints at play in the metabolism and regulation of glycaemia, by making explicit the different hierarchical orders involved. We expect that the proposed theoretical framework will open the way to the construction of original mathematical models, which would provide a better understanding of endocrine regulation from an organicist perspective

The use of the comics in FFL’s classroom

Inmersos en la era de la imagen y de las tecnologías, la didáctica de las lenguas extranjeras se encuentra ante un escenario que posibilita la renovación de la enseñanza tradicional en el aula y fomenta la motivación en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje. Por ello, en el artículo aquí presentado reflexionaremos sobre el uso del cómic como herramienta pedagógica en el aula de FLE (Francés como Lengua Extranjera) a partir de una selección. El cómic representa una forma de expresión literaria que imbrica el texto y la imagen y esto lo con-vierte en un atractivo recurso pedagógico que permite fomentar los hábitos de lectura del alumnado. El cómic, además, presenta un gran potencial en la didáctica de las lenguas extranjeras, ya que no sólo nos permite profundizar en la experiencia lingüística, sino que además posibilita al docente un acercamiento a diferentes con-textos educativos tanto comunicativos como socioculturales. Huelga decir que el francés es lengua vehicular en los más de 80 países que conforman la Francofonía y que las producciones literarias en este ámbito represen-tarán el abanico de acentos, representaciones socioculturales y contextos históricos de esta realidad lingüística transnacional, plurilingüe e interculturalImmersed as we are in the era of image and technologies, the teaching of foreign languages is now in a scenario which enables the renewal of traditional teaching in the classroom and encourages motivation in the process of teaching and learning. That is why in the article we present here we reflect on the use of the comic as an educational tool in the FFL (French as a Foreign Language) classroom based on a selection. The comic, a literary expression where image and text are interwoven, makes an attractive educational tool, promoting stu-dents’ reading habits. In addition, it presents a high potential in the teaching of foreign languages, as it not only allows us to deepen the linguistic experience, but also enables the teacher to approach different communicative and socio-cultural educational contexts. It goes without saying that French is the working language in the over 80 countries which make up the Francophonie, and that the literary productions in that sphere of activity will represent the scope of accents, socio-cultural representations and historical contexts of that transnational, multilingual and intercultural linguistic realit

Co-Teaching: a successful factor on teacher training through collaborative practices and professional advice.

The emphasis of the present study was to design a didactic proposal to help pre-service teachers to develop their teaching skills through collaboration and guidance from expert teachers on the field of linguistics and education. This study is based on the co-teaching model that is defined as the joint work of two teachers with the same group of students sharing planning, organization, delivery as well as physical space (Bacharach, Heck & Dahlberg, 2010). Co-teaching promotes coaching and training for pre-service teachers to apply theory into practice during the different steps of teaching: co-planning, co-delivering, and co-evaluation (Conderman & Hedin, 2012). This research looked for the perceptions that pre-service teachers had about the teaching practicum as well as the roles that cooperating teachers took regarding the supervision of pre-service teachers. According to the findings pre-service teachers realized they did not collaborate with cooperating teachers during planning, delivery and evaluation of the lessons. On the other hand, cooperating teachers were aware of the need of establishing collaborative teaching roles through a formal regulation that fosters commitment between participants. The didactic proposal aims to establish a link of collaboration between pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers through a teaching practice protocol based on the co-teaching model. Pre-service teachers seek for benefits that derived from the exercise of teaching like development of teaching skills, improvement in language, development of social skills related to classrooms and acquisition of work experience. This emerging practice of co-teaching in teacher training holds great promise in transforming the process of teacher preparation and in meeting the needs of teachers from the XXI century (Suárez, 2016)

Eukaryotic metabarcoding pipelines for biodiversity assessment of marine benthic communities affected by ocean acidification

The development of high-throughput sequencing technologies has provided ecologists with an efficient approach to assess biodiversity in benthic communities, particularly with the recent advances in metabarcoding technologies using universal primers. However, analyzing such high-throughput data is posing important computational challenges, requiring specialized bioinformatics solutions at different stages during the processing pipeline, such as assembly of paired-end reads, chimera removal, correction of sequencing errors, and clustering of obtained sequences into Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs). The inferred MOTUs can then be used to estimate species diversity, composition, and richness. Although a number of methods have been developed and commonly used to cluster the sequences into MOTUs, relatively little guidance is available on their relative performance. We focused our study in the benthic community from a natural CO2 vent present in the Canary Islands, as it can be used as a natural laboratory in which to investigate the impacts of chronic ocean acidification. Here, we propose a pipeline for studying this community using a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) sequence. We compared two DNA extraction methods, two clustering methods and validated a robust method to eliminate false positives. We found that we can obtain optimal results purifying DNA from 0.3 g of sample. Using the step-by-step aggregation algorithm implemented in SWARM for clustering yields similar results as using the Bayesian clustering method of CROP, in much less time. We introduced the new algorithm MINT (Multiple Intersection of N Tags), in order to eliminate false positives due to random errors produced before or after the sequencing. Our results show that a fully-automated analysis pipeline can be used for assessing biodiversity of marine benthic communities using COI as a metabarcoding marker in an objective, accurate and affordable manner

Incidence and type of bicuspid aortic valve in two model species

Incidence and type of bicuspid aortic valve in two model species. MC Fernández 1,2, A López-García 1,2, MT Soto 1, AC Durán 1,2 and B Fernández 1,2. 1 Department of Animal Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Málaga, Spain. 2 Biomedical Research Institute of Málaga (IBIMA), University of Málaga, Spain. Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is the most frequent human congenital cardiac malformation, with an incidence of 1–2% worldwide. Two morphological types exist: type A (incidence 0.75–1.25%) and type B (incidence 0.25–0.5%), each with a distinct aetiology and natural history. Currently, ten animal models of BAV have been described in two different rodent species: one spontaneous Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) model of BAV type A and nine mutant laboratory mouse (Mus musculus) models of BAV type B. It remains to be elucidated whether the mutations leading to BAV in these models are typespecific or whether there are inter-specific differences regarding the type of BAV that hamsters, mice and humans may develop. To solve this issue, we have characterized the incidence and types of BAVs in four inbred, two outbred and two hybrid lines of Syrian hamsters (n=4,340) and in three inbred, three outbred and one hybrid lines of laboratory mice (n=1,661) by means of stereomicroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. In addition, we have reviewed and calculated the incidence and type of BAVs in the published papers dealing with this anomaly in mice. Our results indicate that the Syrian hamster develops BAVs type A and B including a variety of morphologies comparable to those of humans, whereas the mouse develops only BAVs type B with a short spectrum of valve morphologies. Thus, inter-specific differences between human and mouse aortic valves must be taken into consideration when studying valve disease in murine models. This work was supported by P10-CTS-6068.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. P10-CTS-6068

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Is systems biology a promising approach to resolve controversies in cancer research?

At the beginning of the 21st century cancer research has reached an impasse similar to that experienced in developmental biology in the first decades of the 20th century when conflicting results and interpretations co-existed for a long time until these differences were resolved and contradictions were eliminated. In cancer research, instead of this healthy "weeding-out" process, there have been attempts to reach a premature synthesis, while no hypothesis is being rejected. Systems Biology could help cancer research to overcome this stalemate by resolving contradictions and identifying spurious data. First, in silico experiments should allow cancer researchers to be bold and a priori reject sets of data and hypotheses in order to gain a deeper understanding of how each dataset and each hypothesis contributes to the overall picture. In turn, this process should generate novel hypotheses and rules, which could be explored using these in silico approaches. These activities are significantly less costly and much faster than "wet-experiments". Consequently, Systems Biology could be advantageously used both as a heuristic tool to guide "wet-experiments" and to refine hypotheses and test predictions