Evolution of form and function in a model of differentiated multicellular organisms with gene regulatory networks

The emergence of novelties, as a generator of diversity, in the form and function of the organisms have long puzzled biologists. The study of the developmental process and the anatomical properties of an organism provides scarce information into the means by which its morphology evolved. Some have argued that the very nature of novelty is believed to be linked to the evolution of gene regulation, rather than to the emergence of new structural genes. In order to gain further insight into the evolution of novelty and diversity, we describe a simple computational model of gene regulation that controls the development of locomotive multicellular organisms through a fixed set of simple structural genes. Organisms, modeled as two-dimensional spring networks, are simulated in a virtual environment to evaluate their steering skills for path-following. Proposed as a behavior-finding problem, this fitness function guides an evolutionary algorithm that produces structures whose function is well-adapted to the environment (i.e., good path-followers). We show that, despite the fixed simple set of structural genes, the evolution of gene regulation yields a rich variety of body plans, including symmetries, body segments, and modularity, resulting in a diversity of original behaviors to follow a simple path. These results suggest that the sole variation in the regulation of gene expression is a sufficient condition for the emergence of novelty and diversity.This work has been partially funded by the Sixth European Union Framework Program for Research and Technological Development, contract #028892

Evolutionary Development based on Genetic Regulatory Models for Behavior-Finding

This thesis investigates the role, implications, and applications of a genetic-regulated developmental process in evolution. A novel formalism of string-regulated graph grammar, as an abstraction of biological development, is presented and studied. Founded on this formalism, evolutionary developmental models are introduced and tested. The results demonstrate the benefits of the models, compared to traditional direct encoding approaches, for the problems of form-finding and behavior-finding

Behavior finding: Morphogenetic Designs Shaped by Function

Evolution has shaped an incredible diversity of multicellular living organisms, whose complex forms are self-made through a robust developmental process. This fundamental combination of biological evolution and development has served as an inspiration for novel engineering design methodologies, with the goal to overcome the scalability problems suffered by classical top-down approaches. Top-down methodologies are based on the manual decomposition of the design into modular, independent subunits. In contrast, recent computational morphogenetic techniques have shown that they were able to automatically generate truly complex innovative designs. Algorithms based on evolutionary computation and artificial development have been proposed to automatically design both the structures, within certain constraints, and the controllers that optimize their function. However, the driving force of biological evolution does not resemble an enumeration of design requirements, but much rather relies on the interaction of organisms within the environment. Similarly, controllers do not evolve nor develop separately, but are woven into the organism’s morphology. In this chapter, we discuss evolutionary morphogenetic algorithms inspired by these important aspects of biological evolution. The proposed methodologies could contribute to the automation of processes that design “organic” structures, whose morphologies and controllers are intended to solve a functional problem. The performance of the algorithms is tested on a class of optimization problems that we call behavior-finding. These challenges are not explicitly based on morphology or controller constraints, but only on the solving abilities and efficacy of the design. Our results show that morphogenetic algorithms are well suited to behavior-finding

LTMaker: a tool for semiautomatic reconstruction of the embryonic lineage tree from 4D-microscopy

Studies of animal development using a 4Dmicroscopy system generate an immense amount of image data. In order to properly analyze the recorded embryogenesis, a computer-aided systematic process of categorization of cells from the image data should be accomplished. We present a software tool named LTMaker for the systematic semiautomatic identification of embryonic cells centers and also to determine the underlying linage tree. The program saves the generated data to a file so that further analysis of the embryo can be performed with external tools.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Just-In-Time eTraining Applied To Emergency Medical Services

While the applications of just-in-time training are more and more spread, the ubiquitous mobile technology has not found practical uses of this training strategy. As an original example of services for healthcare, we present in this work an application of eTraining that makes use of mobile telephones to transmit medical and on-site information content to emergency medical personnel that attend and emergency. The state-of-the-art in related technologies, overall architecture, and functioning of JITTER (for Just-In-Time Training for Emergency Responders) is described in this work.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. This work has been funded by the FIT-350100-2006-400 PROFIT project of the Spanish Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, American NSF grant DMI-0239180, NIEHS (National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences) grant 1R41ES014793-01, BanDeMar Networks, Inc., the healthcare company iSOFT Sanidad, S.A., and the CITIC Technology Centre

On capacity planning for the GMPLS network control plane

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11107-007-0107-9This paper presents capacity planning rules for the control plane of all-optical networks featuring GMPLS and RSVP-TE as a connection setup protocol. As per RSVP standard, a refresh message mechanism is incorporated to RSVP such that the state is periodically refreshed on a link per link basis. We provide analytical expressions for the bandwidth and buffer sizes to be provided such that no flows are torn down due to lack of refresh messages. Our findings show that small buffers (several KBytes) suffice to sustain the signaling load for as much as 400 RSVP flows per link, with the simplest RSVP refresh mechanism (neither using link bundling nor acknowledgments). On the other hand, we also find the packet drop probability per link for a given network topology for the case that the flow survival probability is larger than a given threshold. We provide numerical examples based on the COST 239 european network topology and real RSVP traffic traces from early-commercial switching equipment.This work was funded by EU Project NOBEL (FP6-506760), Project CELTIC-FIRM and the Spanish MEC (project CAPITAL subproject code: TEC2004- 05622-C04-04 and project PINTA

Mobile just-in-time training application for emergency healthcare

While the applications of just-in-time training are more and more spread, the ubiquitous mobile technology has not found practical uses of this training strategy. As an original example of services for healthcare, we present in this work an application of eTraining that makes use of mobile telephones to transmit medical and on-site information content to emergency medical personnel that attend and emergency. The state-of-the-art in related technologies, overall architecture, and functioning of JITTER (for Just-In-Time Training for Emergency Responders) is described in this work.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Laboratorio de Física I en la virtualidad

En la Facultad de Ingeniería de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), la materia Física I se dicta integrando teoría, práctica y laboratorio. Los laboratorios son una parte esencial en el proceso de aprendizaje de los contenidos, y por lo tanto deben ser adaptados a las situaciones que nos atañen, actualmente, la virtualidad. Por lo general, los alumnos suelen tener dificultades para relacionar la teoría y la práctica con la realidad cotidiana. Una de las principales razones para esto es que la teoría pareciera a veces estar alejada de la realidad, y que los conceptos dados no son realmente aplicables. Por este motivo, se ha decidido a pesar de las dificultades que impone la no presencialidad, continuar realizando algunos laboratorios los cuales han sido adaptados para ser llevados a cabo con materiales de fácil acceso, como es el caso de la experiencia de la Ley de Hooke que se describe en este trabajo. El mismo consiste en crear un dispositivo empleando bandas elásticas, elásticos o resortes, y que los estudiantes realicen una serie de mediciones con el fin de determinar la constante elástica del material, así como estudiar el comportamiento del mismo en distintas configuraciones (serie y paralelo). Dicha tarea fue realizada por grupos de estudiantes de la cátedra durante el 2do semestre de 2020 habiéndose obtenido una muy buena recepción por parte de los mismos, además de resultados acordes con los vistos en la teoría. En particular, en este artículo se presenta el trabajo y resultados obtenidos por uno de los grupos el cual a modo de experiencia piloto fue evaluado por competencias. Esta experiencia fue realizada utilizando las estrategias de aprendizaje basado en el problema y un proceso de evaluación por competencias, adaptado a la virtualidad, lo cual se explica a lo largo del artículo. También se citan en las referencias los autores en los cuales se basa el marco teórico. En el trabajo se describe la experiencia que realizaron los estudiantes. Finalmente, se analiza el proceso, los resultados y su impacto en el aprendizaje.Facultad de Ingenierí

Analysis of laccase-like enzymes secreted by fungi isolated from a cave in northern Spain

[EN] Laccases belong to a family of multicopper enzymes able to oxidize a broad spectrum of organic compounds. Despite the well-known property of laccases to carry out bleaching and degradation of industrial dyes and polyphenolic compounds, their industrial use is often limited by the high cost, low efficiency, or instability of these enzymes. To look for new microorganisms which produce laccases that are potentially suitable for industrial applications, we have isolated several fungal strains from a cave in northern Spain. Their phenotypic analysis on agar plates supplemented with ABTS (2,2 '-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid)) disclosed two laccase-positive strains. Further genotyping revealed that they belonged to the Gliomastix murorum and Conidiobolus thromboides species. The secretion of G. murorum and C. thromboides laccase-like enzymes was then confirmed by zymography. Further identification of these polypeptides by mass-spectroscopy revealed the nature of the laccases and made it possible to predict their functional domains and other features. In addition, plate assays revealed that the laccases secreted by both G. murorum and C. thromboides were capable of degrading industrial dyes (Congo Red, Indigo, and Eriochrome Black T). Homology modeling and substrate docking predicted the putative structure of the currently uncrystallized G. murorum enzyme as well as its amino acid residues potentially involved in interactions with these dyes. In summary, new biochemical and structural insights into decolorization mediated by G. murorum laccase as well as identification of laccase-like oxidase in C. thromboides point to a promising future for these enzymes in biotechnology.AIOTEK, Grant/Award Number: SPE12UN84; Basque Foundation for Science; Basque Government, Grant/Award Number: PRE-2013-1-90

Transcultural Adaptation and Validation of the Spanish Bristol Foot Score (BFS-S)

[Abstract] The Bristol Foot Score is considered an instrument for measuring the impact of foot problems and pain. It was developed and validated in United Kingdom. Therefore, this aim was to perform the transcultural adaptation and validation of the Spanish version. The recommended forward/backward translation protocol was applied for the procedure of translation, transcultural adaptation and validation to Spain. Considering each domain and question, internal consistency and reliability were analyzed through the Crombach alpha (α) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) with a 95% confidence interval (95% CI). A very good internal consistency was shown for the 3 domains: concern and pain showed a Cronbach of 0.896, footwear and general foot health of 0.790, mobility 0.887. Each question had a very good test-retest reliability, ranged from 0.721 to 0.963 with no systematic differences (P>0.05) in each question of the Spanish Bristol Foot Score (BFS-S) questionnaire. The test-retest reliability was excellent (ICC 95%): concern and foot pain 0.950 (0.913-0971); footwear and general foot health 0.914 (0.851-0.950), mobility 0.973 (0.953-0.984) and there were no sistematic differences in any domain (P > 0.05). The BFS-S was shown to be a valid and reliable tool with an acceptable use in the Spanish population