Publications by authors named "Nicolas D Franco-Sierra"

Background: The Neotropics harbors the largest species richness of the planet; however, even in well-studied groups, there are potentially hundreds of species that lack a formal description, and likewise, many already described taxa are difficult to identify using morphology. Specifically in small mammals, complex morphological diagnoses have been facilitated by the use of molecular data, particularly from mitochondrial sequences, to obtain accurate species identifications. Obtaining mitochondrial markers implies the use of PCR and specific primers, which are largely absent for non-model organisms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis is a powerful tool for studying biodiversity in forests and tree canopies. However, collecting representative eDNA samples from these high and complex environments remains challenging. Traditional methods, such as surface swabbing or tree rolling, are labor-intensive and require significant effort to achieve adequate coverage.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • COVID-19 was first detected in Colombia on February 26, 2020, in a traveler from Italy, but there's limited information about its origins in the country.
  • Researchers sequenced the SARS-CoV-2 virus from 43 clinical samples and analyzed 79 existing genome sequences to study how the virus entered Colombia.
  • The study identified multiple introductions of the virus from Europe, documenting over 12 lineages and emphasizing the importance of genome sequencing in understanding the outbreak's evolution and transmission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

SARS-CoV-2 is a new member of the genus Betacoronavirus, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus crossed the species barrier and established in the human population taking advantage of the spike protein high affinity for the ACE receptor to infect the lower respiratory tract. The Nucleocapsid (N) and Spike (S) are highly immunogenic structural proteins and most commercial COVID-19 diagnostic assays target these proteins.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 is a public health problem unprecedented in the recent history of humanity. Different in-house real-time RT-PCR (rRT-PCR) methods for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis and the appearance of genomes with mutations in primer regions have been reported. Hence, whole-genome data from locally-circulating SARS-CoV-2 strains contribute to the knowledge of its global variability and the development and fine tuning of diagnostic protocols.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Molecular information is crucial for species identification when facing challenging morphology-based specimen identifications. The use of DNA barcodes partially solves this problem, but in some cases when PCR is not an option (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bacillus subtilis is a remarkably diverse bacterial species that displays many ecological functions. Given its genomic diversity, the strain Bacillus subtilis EA-CB0575, isolated from the rhizosphere of a banana plant, was sequenced and assembled to determine the genomic potential associated with its plant growth promotion potential. The genome was sequenced by Illumina technology and assembled using Velvet 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The strain sp. UdeA0106 is an antagonist of nematodes, fungi, and garden symphylans from crops with high economic importance in Colombia (Salazar 2013; Salazar et al. 2014; Cardona et al.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The complete mitogenome of the potato tuber moth Tecia solanivora (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) was sequenced, annotated, characterized and compared with 140 species of the order Lepidoptera. The circular genome is 15,251 bp, containing 37 genes (13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes and an A+T-rich region). The gene arrangement was identical to other lepidopteran mitogenomes but different from the ancestral arrangement found in most insects for the tRNA-Met gene (A+T-region, tRNA-I, tRNA-Q, tRNA-M).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_session3djq3mn0pbnoaop3pnbg5td9v8q0o84d): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once