From local bacterial communities to energy: application of microbial fuel cells in laboratory experimentation.

It is well known that bacterial communities are an essential component to maintain the balance of terrestrial ecosystems due to the functions and services performed by microorganisms in the environment. The research seeking on alternative energy sources has shown that bacterial communities can bioconvert the chemical energy of an organic substrate into electrical energy, within devices known as microbial fuel cells. For this reason, this class project allows students of Biotechnology, Environmental Science, and Microbiology to apply the appropriate methodology to develop a class project throughout an environmental bacterial community capable of generating electrical energy.

Marine Arthropods as a Source of Antimicrobial Peptides.

Peptide therapeutics play a key role in the development of new medical treatments. The traditional focus on endogenous peptides has shifted from first discovering other natural sources of these molecules, to later synthesizing those with unique bioactivities. This review provides concise information concerning antimicrobial peptides derived from marine crustaceans for the development of new therapeutics.

GUSignal: An Informatics Tool to Analyze Glucuronidase Gene Expression in Arabidopsis Thaliana Roots.

The uidA gene codifies for a glucuronidase (GUS) enzyme which has been used as a biotechnological tool during the last years. When uidA gene is fused to a gene's promotor region, it is possible to evaluate the activity of this one in response to a stimulus. Arabidopsis thaliana has served as the biological platform to elucidate molecular and regulatory signaling responses in plants.

NIFtHool: an informatics program for identification of NifH proteins using deep neural networks.

Atmospheric nitrogen fixation carried out by microorganisms has environmental and industrial importance, related to the increase of soil fertility and productivity. The present work proposes the development of a new high precision system that allows the recognition of amino acid sequences of the nitrogenase enzyme (NifH) as a promising way to improve the identification of diazotrophic bacteria. For this purpose, a database obtained from UniProt built a processed dataset formed by a set of 4911 and 4782 amino acid sequences of the NifH and non-NifH proteins respectively.

[ß-lactam antibiotics resistance in Latin American countries].

Ever since antimicrobial activity was observed at the end of the XIX century and antibiotics were produced on a large scale in the 40s, microorganisms have developed multiple resistance mechanisms, making treatment of infectious diseases difficult. For instance, several Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria lowered their sensitivity to ß-Lactam antibiotics as a result of their inadequate use and abuse. For this reason, microbial resistance to these drugs represents an increasing health problem in Latin America due to the emergence of drug-resistant bacterial strains.