Preparation and Characterization of Electrospun Food Biopackaging Films of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) Derived From Fruit Pulp Biowaste

In the present study, circular economy based and potentially low-cost poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) was produced by mixed microbial cultures derived from fruit pulp, an industrial by-product of the juice industry. Three different chemical routes, namely non-extraction, extraction with sodium hypochlorite (NaClO), and extraction with chloroform, in combination with filtering and centrifugation, were explored to purify the biopolymer and find the most optimal solution for its processing via electrospinning. The resultant ultrathin fiber mats of the different extracted PHBV materials were thermally post-processed at different temperatures in order to obtain continuous films adequate for food packaging applications. The resultant films were characterized in terms of morphology, crystallinity as well as thermal, mechanical, and barrier properties. The results showed that extraction with both chloroform and NaClO with a post-treatment of filtering and centrifugation of the PHBV-containing biomass were necessary refining steps to allow its processing by electrospinning. In particular, the PHBV extracted with chloroform presented the highest degree of purity, resulting in more transparent films with lower wettability and higher flexibility. The here-formulated electrospun films made of biomass derived from biowaste exhibit great potential as interlayers or coatings for food biopackaging applications

A limit on the evolutionary rescue of an Antarctic bacterium from rising temperatures

Climate change is gradual, but it can also cause brief extreme heat waves that can exceed the upper thermal limit of any one organism. To study the evolutionary potential of upper thermal tolerance, we evolved the cold-adapted Antarctic bacterium Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis to survive at 30°C, beyond its ancestral thermal limit. This high-temperature adaptation occurred rapidly and in multiple populations. It involved genomic changes that occurred in a highly parallel fashion and mitigated the effects of protein misfolding. However, it also confronted a physiological limit, because populations failed to grow beyond 30°C. Our experiments aimed to facilitate evolutionary rescue by using a small organism with large populations living at temperatures several degrees below their upper thermal limit. Larger organisms with smaller populations and living at temperatures closer to their upper thermal tolerances are even more likely to go extinct during extreme heat waves

A rewiring model of intratumoral interaction networks.

Intratumoral heterogeneity (ITH) has been regarded as a key cause of the failure and resistance of cancer therapy, but how it behaves and functions remains unclear. Advances in single-cell analysis have facilitated the collection of a massive amount of data about genetic and molecular states of individual cancer cells, providing a fuel to dissect the mechanistic organization of ITH at the molecular, metabolic and positional level. Taking advantage of these data, we propose a computational model to rewire up a topological network of cell-cell interdependences and interactions that operate within a tumor mass. The model is grounded on the premise of game theory that each interactive cell (player) strives to maximize its fitness by pursuing a rational self-interest strategy, war or peace, in a way that senses and alters other cells to respond properly. By integrating this idea with genome-wide association studies for intratumoral cells, the model is equipped with a capacity to visualize, annotate and quantify how somatic mutations mediate ITH and the network of intratumoral interactions. Taken together, the model provides a topological flow by which cancer cells within a tumor cooperate or compete with each other to downstream pathogenesis. This topological flow can be potentially used as a blueprint for genetically intervening the pattern and strength of cell-cell interactions towards cancer control

Implementación de nuevas metodologías docentes virtuales para la enseñanza de la antropología

Memoria ID-0305. Ayudas de la Universidad de Salamanca para la innovación docente, curso 2014-2015

Differential clonal evolution in oesophageal cancers in response to neo-adjuvant chemotherapy

How chemotherapy affects carcinoma genomes is largely unknown. Here we report whole-exome and deep sequencing of 30 paired oesophageal adenocarcinomas sampled before and after neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. Most, but not all, good responders pass through genetic bottlenecks, a feature associated with higher mutation burden pre-treatment. Some poor responders pass through bottlenecks, but re-grow by the time of surgical resection, suggesting a missed therapeutic opportunity. Cancers often show major changes in driver mutation presence or frequency after treatment, owing to outgrowth persistence or loss of sub-clones, copy number changes, polyclonality and/or spatial genetic heterogeneity. Post-therapy mutation spectrum shifts are also common, particularly C>A and TT>CT changes in good responders or bottleneckers. Post-treatment samples may also acquire mutations in known cancer driver genes (for example, SF3B1, TAF1 and CCND2) that are absent from the paired pre-treatment sample. Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy can rapidly and profoundly affect the oesophageal adenocarcinoma genome. Monitoring molecular changes during treatment may be clinically useful

Coordinación de la tutorización de los trabajos fin de máster y puesta en común de metodologías de investigación social

Memoria ID12-0160. Ayudas de la Universidad de Salamanca para la innovación docente, curso 2012-2013

Differential Modulation of igT and igM upon Parasitic, Bacterial, Viral, and Dietary challenges in a Perciform Fish

16 páginas, 8 figuras, 2 tablas.-- This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these termsThree different immunoglobulin (Ig) isotypes can be found in teleost fish, IgM, IgD, and the teleost-specific IgT. IgM is considered to have a systemic activity, and IgT is attributed a mucosal role, similar to mammalian IgA. In this study, the complete sequence of gilthead sea bream IgM and IgT in their membrane (m) and soluble (s) forms are described for the first time in a perciform fish. Their constitutive gene expression is analyzed in different tissues, and their regulation upon viral, bacterial, parasitic, mucosal vaccination and dietary challenges are studied. GCB IgM and IgT have the prototypical structure when compared to other fish Igs. The constitutive expression of sIgM was the highest overall in all tissues, whereas mIgT expression was highest in mucosal tissues, such as gills and intestine. IgM and IgT were differentially regulated upon infection. IgT was highly upregulated locally upon infection with the intestinal parasite Enteromyxum leei or systemically after Nodavirus infection. Long-term intestinal parasitic infections increased the serum titer of both isotypes. Mucosal vaccination against Photobacterium damselae subsp. piscicida finely regulated the Ig response inducing a systemic increase of IgM titers in serum and a local IgT response in skin mucus when animals were exposed to the pathogen by bath challenge. Interestingly, plant-based diets inhibit IgT upregulation upon intestinal parasitic challenge, which was related to a worse disease outcome. All these results corroborate the mucosal role of IgT and emphasize the importance of a finely tuned regulation of Ig isotypes upon infection, which could be of special interest in vaccination studiesThis work has been carried out with financial support from by the Spanish MINECO under projects AGL2013-48560-R to JP-S and AS-B and AGL2014-51773-C3-3-R to EG-C. Additional funding was provided by the European Union, through the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 634429 (ParaFishControl) and through the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) under grant 311993 (TARGETFISH). Additional support was provided by Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2014/085). MCP was supported by the Spanish grant Formación Postdoctoral 2013 (FPDI-2013-15741). We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).Peer reviewe

Cancer Diagnosis Using a Liquid Biopsy: Challenges and Expectations

The field of cancer diagnostics has recently been impacted by new and exciting developments in the area of liquid biopsy. A liquid biopsy is a minimally invasive alternative to surgical biopsies of solid tissues, typically achieved through the withdrawal of a blood sample or other body fluids, allowing the interrogation of tumor-derived material including circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) fragments that are present at a given time point. In this short review, we discuss a few studies that summarize the state-of-the-art in the liquid biopsy field from a diagnostic perspective, and speculate on current challenges and expectations of implementing liquid biopsy testing for cancer diagnosis and monitoring in the clinical setting

Hypoxia Triggers the Intravasation of Clustered Circulating Tumor Cells

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are shed from solid cancers in the form of single or clustered cells, and the latter display an extraordinary ability to initiate metastasis. Yet, the biological phenomena that trigger the shedding of CTC clusters from a primary cancerous lesion are poorly understood. Here, when dynamically labeling breast cancer cells along cancer progression, we observe that the majority of CTC clusters are undergoing hypoxia, while single CTCs are largely normoxic. Strikingly, we find that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) targeting leads to primary tumor shrinkage, but it increases intra-tumor hypoxia, resulting in a higher CTC cluster shedding rate and metastasis formation. Conversely, pro-angiogenic treatment increases primary tumor size, yet it dramatically suppresses the formation of CTC clusters and metastasis. Thus, intra-tumor hypoxia leads to the formation of clustered CTCs with high metastatic ability, and a pro-angiogenic therapy suppresses metastasis formation through prevention of CTC cluster generation