Amplification and cloning of cDNAS of cytochrome P4501A1 and metallothionein genes from Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758 and Liza aurata (Risso, 1810) by Race-PCR

The biotransformation of xenobiotics found in marine ecosystems is catalysed by inducible systems, a property that makes them useful as early-warning biomarkers of environmental pollution. We have focused our study on cytochrome P4501A1 (CYP 1A1) as a phase I response against organic aromatic xenobiotics, and metallothionein (MT), which reflects pollution by transition metals. The high homology existing between the sequences of both genes, already cloned in different fish species, enabled us to design degenerate oligos to amplify by RT-PCR specific sequences of CYP 1A1 and MT genes in two teleost fish species of the Spanish South Atlantic littoral, the gilthead seabream, Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758, and the grey mullet, Liza aurata (Risso 1810). To this end, the expression of both genes was previously induced by intraperitoneal injection with Aroclor 1254 (CYP 1A1) and CdCl2 (MT). The specific sequences for both genes amplified by RT-PCR with degenerate oligos were subsequently used to design new, specific oligos to obtain by Race-PCR (Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends) the complete cDNAs coding for both genes in both fish species, which were subsequently cloned and sequenced. The coding sequences and the corresponding proteins were compared with those already obtained in other fish species. We are currently developing homologous probes for mRNA quantification using molecular biology techniques in both fish species, to be employed as molecular biomarkers of pollution in the Spanish South Atlantic littoral.La biotransformación de xenobióticos presentes en ecosistemas marinos está catalizada por varios sistemas inducibles, lo que permite su uso como biomarcadores de alerta temprana de contaminación ambiental. Este estudio se ha centrado en el citocromo P4501A1 (CYP 1A1), como respuesta de fase I contra xenobióticos orgánicos aromáticos, y la metalotioneína (MT), que refleja la contaminación por metales de transición. La alta homología existente entre las secuencias de ambos genes previamente clonados en diferentes especies de peces permitió diseñar oligos degenerados para amplificar por RT-PCR secuencias específicas de los genes CYP 1A1 y MT en dos especies de peces teleósteos del litoral suratlántico español, la dorada Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758 y la lisa Liza aurata (Risso, 1810). Para ello, la expresión de ambos genes se indujo por inyección intraperitoneal con Aroclor 1254 (CYP 1A1) y CdCl2 (MT). Las secuencias específicas de ambos genes, amplificadas por RT-PCR con tales oligos, se usaron posteriormente para diseñar nuevos oligos específicos; éstos se usaron para amplificar por Race-PCR (Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends) los cDNAs completos que codifican tales genes en ambas especies de peces, que fueron posteriormente clonados y secuenciados. Las secuencias codificantes y las proteínas correspondientes se han comparado con las obtenidas en otras especies de peces. Actualmente se desarrollan sondas homólogas para cuantificar por métodos de biología molecular los mRNAs específicos en ambos peces, para su uso como biomarcadores moleculares de contaminación en el litoral suratlántico español.Instituto Español de Oceanografí

Amplification and cloning of cDNAS of cytochrome P4501A1 and metallothionein genes from Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758 and Liza aurata (Risso, 1810) by Race-PCR

The biotransformation of xenobiotics found in marine ecosystems is catalysed by inducible systems, a property that makes them useful as early-warning biomarkers of environmental pollution. We have focused our study on cytochrome P4501A1 (CYP 1A1) as a phase I response against organic aromatic xenobiotics, and metallothionein (MT), which reflects pollution by transition metals. The high homology existing between the sequences of both genes, already cloned in different fish species, enabled us to design degenerate oligos to amplify by RT-PCR specific sequences of CYP 1A1 and MT genes in two teleost fish species of the Spanish South Atlantic littoral, the gilthead seabream, Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758, and the grey mullet, Liza aurata (Risso 1810). To this end, the expression of both genes was previously induced by intraperitoneal injection with Aroclor 1254 (CYP 1A1) and CdCl2 (MT). The specific sequences for both genes amplified by RT-PCR with degenerate oligos were subsequently used to design new, specific oligos to obtain by Race-PCR (Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends) the complete cDNAs coding for both genes in both fish species, which were subsequently cloned and sequenced. The coding sequences and the corresponding proteins were compared with those already obtained in other fish species. We are currently developing homologous probes for mRNA quantification using molecular biology techniques in both fish species, to be employed as molecular biomarkers of pollution in the Spanish South Atlantic littoralLa biotransformación de xenobióticos presentes en ecosistemas marinos está catalizada por varios sistemas inducibles, lo que permite su uso como biomarcadores de alerta temprana de contaminación ambiental. Este estudio se ha centrado en el citocromo P4501A1 (CYP 1A1), como respuesta de fase I contra xenobióticos orgánicos aromáticos, y la metalotioneína (MT), que refleja la contaminación por metales de transición. La alta homología existente entre las secuencias de ambos genes previamente clonados en diferentes especies de peces permitió diseñar oligos degenerados para amplificar por RT-PCR secuencias específicas de los genes CYP 1A1 y MT en dos especies de peces teleósteos del litoral suratlántico español, la dorada Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758 y la lisa Liza aurata (Risso, 1810). Para ello, la expresión de ambos genes se indujo por inyección intraperitoneal con Aroclor 1254 (CYP 1A1) y CdCl2 (MT). Las secuencias específicas de ambos genes, amplificadas por RT-PCR con tales oligos, se usaron posteriormente para diseñar nuevos oligos específicos; éstos se usaron para amplificar por Race-PCR (Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends) los cDNAs completos que codifican tales genes en ambas especies de peces, que fueron posteriormente clonados y secuenciados. Las secuencias codificantes y las proteínas correspondientes se han comparado con las obtenidas en otras especies de peces. Actualmente se desarrollan sondas homólogas para cuantificar por métodos de biología molecular los mRNAs específicos en ambos peces, para su uso como biomarcadores moleculares de contaminación en el litoral suratlántico españo

Curriculum and teaching: what and how student at risk are thought?

En el presente artículo se analiza el currículo y la enseñanza de dos programas o medidas que se desarrollan en la Región de Murcia y en la Comunidad de Andalucía –Programa de Diversificación Curricular y Programa de Iniciación Profesional y/o Programa de Garantía Social- ambos destinados al alumnado con serias dificultades para continuar la enseñanza en las aulas regulares. Tras presentar diversos datos recogidos a través de cuestionarios y entrevistas con diferentes sujetos implicados, se analizan y valoran los resultados de la investigación realizada, procurando responder a la cuestión de en que grado el currículo diseñado en tales programas y la formación y aprendizajes logrados han contribuido a responder a las necesidades de este alumnadoThe article analyses curriculum and teaching of two programs in the Region of Murcia and in the Community of Andalusia - Program of Diversification Curricular and Program of Professional Initiation and / or Program of Social Guarantee – designed and implemented with students at risks, in serious difficulties to progress their learning in regular classrooms and teaching. After presenting different data gathered throw questionnaires and interviews carried out with different teachers, the outcomes are analyzed and valued in order to answer the question related to the degree in which de curriculum designed and its implementation in such programs respond properly to students needs and contributed to theirs expected learnin

Integrating state-of-the-art CNNs for multi-sensor 3D vehicle detection in real autonomous driving environments

2019 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), Auckland, New Zealand, 27-30 Oct. 2019This paper presents two new approaches to detect surrounding vehicles in 3D urban driving scenes and their corresponding Bird’s Eye View (BEV). The proposals integrate two state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), such as YOLOv3 and Mask-RCNN, in a framework presented by the authors in [1] for 3D vehicles detection fusing semantic image segmentation and LIDAR point cloud. Our proposals take advantage of multimodal fusion, geometrical constrains, and pre-trained modules inside our framework. The methods have been tested using the KITTI object detection benchmark and comparison is presented. Experiments show new approaches improve results with respect to the baseline and are on par with other competitive state-of-the-art proposals, being the only ones that do not apply an end-to-end learning process. In this way, they remove the need to train on a specific dataset and show a good capability of generalization to any domain, a key point for self-driving systems. Finally, we have tested our best proposal in KITTI in our driving environment, without any adaptation, obtaining results suitable for our autonomous driving application.Ministerio de Economía y CompetitividadComunidad de Madri

Integration of proteomics with transcriptomics and metallomics for the study of environmental issues

Comunicaciones a congreso

Simulating use cases for the UAH autonomous electric car

2019 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), Auckland, New Zealand, 27-30 Oct. 2019This paper presents the simulation use cases for the UAH Autonomous Electric Car, related with typical driving scenarios in urban environments, focusing on the use of hierarchical interpreted binary Petri nets in order to implement the decision making framework of an autonomous electric vehicle. First, we describe our proposal of autonomous system architecture, which is based on the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) framework that allows the fusion of multiple sensors and the real-time processing and communication of multiple processes in different embedded processors. Then, the paper focuses on the study of some of the most interesting driving scenarios such as: stop, pedestrian crossing, Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and overtaking, illustrating both the executive module that carries out each behaviour based on Petri nets and the trajectory and linear velocity that allows to quantify the accuracy and robustness of the architecture proposal for environment perception, navigation and planning on a university Campus.Ministerio de Economía y CompetitividadComunidad de Madri

Triplication of the photocurrent in dye solar cells by increasing the elongation of the π-conjugation in Zn-porphyrin sensitizers

Porphyrins are promising sensitizers for dye solar cells (DSCs) but narrow absorption bands at 400-450 and 500-650 nm limit their light-harvesting properties. Increasing elongation of the π-conjugation and loss of symmetry causes broadening and a red-shift of the absorption bands, which considerably improves the performance of the DSC. Herein we use an oligothienylenevinylene to bridge a Zn-porphyrin system and the anchoring group of the sensitizer. We separately study the performance of the two basic units: oligothienylenevinylene and Zn-porphyrin. The combined system provides a three-fold enhancement of the photocurrent with respect to parent dyes. This is caused by an additional strong absorption in the region 400-650 nm that leads to flat IPCE of 60%. Theoretical calculations support that the addition of the oligothienylenevinylene unit as a linking bridge creates a charge transfer band that transforms a Zn-porphyrin dye into a push-pull type system with highly efficient charge injection propertie

The Experience of Robesafe Team in CARLA Autonomous Driving Challenge

Robótica e Inteligencia Artificial: Retos y nuevas oportunidades. 10 de diciembre de 2019, ETSII UPM (RoboCity2030)The future of the automotive is focused on achieving total autonomous cars in realistic urban environments. To reach it, many researching teams are working with 3D simulators such as V-REP and Gazebo, due to an easy integration with ROS platform. ROS is a middle-ware for robot code development. It allows easy communication between different systems. It is multilanguage, admitting C++ and Python code programming. Those simulators provide precise motion information, but they are designed for smaller environments like robotic arms, providing unrealistic appearance and very slow performance, being unrecommended for real-time systems in rich worlds like urban cities. CARLA simulator provides high detailed environments in realistic urban situations, being able to train and test control and perception algorithms in complex traffic scenarios, very close to real situations. CARLA Autonomous Driving Challenge was launched in Summer 2019, allowing everyone to test their own control techniques under the same traffic scenarios, scoring its performance regarding traffic rules. Robesafe researching group, from Universidad de Alcalá, submitted to this challenge, with the aim of achieving high results and compare our control and perception techniques with others provided by other teams.Comunidad de Madri

Evaluación de la calidad ambiental de ecosistemas acuáticos en el entorno del Parque Nacional de Doñana

Resumen de la comunicación presentada al XX Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Mutagénesis Ambiental – Córdoba 201

Naturalistic driving study for older drivers based on the DriveSafe app

2019 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), Auckland, New Zealand, 27-30 Oct. 2019Elderly population is increasing year after year in the developed countries. However, the knowledge of actual mobility needs of senior drivers is scarce. In this paper, we present a naturalistic driving study (NDS) focused on older drivers through smartphone technology and using our DriveSafe app. Our system automatically generates a driving analysis report based on objective indicators. The proposal supposes an improvement over the traditional surveys and observers, and represents an advance over the current NDSs by using smartphones instead of complex instrumented vehicles. Our method avoids the problems of manual annotation by using an automatic method for data reduction information. Furthermore, a comparison between traditional questionnaires and information provided by our system is carried out and conclusions are presented.Ministerio de Economía y CompetitividadDGTComunidad de Madri