Publications by authors named "Roberto Zamora-Bustillos"

Stingless bees are important pollinators in tropical regions, but their survival and behavior have been impacted by various factors, including exposure to insecticides. Here, we evaluated the lethal and sublethal effects of commercial formulations of two widely used insecticides, flupyradifurone (FPF formulation), and cyantraniliprole (CY formulation), on Melipona beecheii and Nannotrigona perilampoides. The study involved oral exposure of bees to insecticides, calculation of the lethal concentration (LC) and the lethal time (LT), and evaluation of walking and flight take-off activities.

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Insufficient protein intake during the larval phase of drones affects the development of reproductive organs and spermatogenesis. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of the flowering-scarcity and flowering-onset periods on the eversion of the copulatory apparatus, ejaculation, and sperm quality of drones ( L.).

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Melipona beecheii pot-pollen is a natural product that has barely been studied, unlike other hive products such as honey and propolis. Its application has been reported since ancient times in traditional Mayan medicine, and it is also a functional food with high nutritional value. In the present study, samples of ethanolic pot-pollen extracts from five locations in the Yucatán Peninsula were analyzed to determine their antibacterial and antioxidant properties.

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Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic bacterium that can form a biofilm with the ability to colonize different surfaces and for increasing resistance to antibiotics. An alternative to solve this problem may be the use of non-glucose/mannose glycosylated proteins from Melipona beecheii honey, which are capable of inhibiting the growth of this pathogen. In this work, the antibiofilm activity of the conA-unbound protein fraction (F1) from M.

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Insecticides used in agricultural pest management pose survival risks to the stingless bees that forage on crops in tropical and subtropical regions. In the present study, we evaluated, under laboratory conditions, the acute oral toxicity of five selected insecticides (dinotefuran, imidacloprid, flupyradifurone, spirotetramat, and cyantraniliprole) to two species of neotropical stingless bees: and . At field recommended doses, dinotefuran, imidacloprid, and flupyradifurone caused the highest mortality in both bee species.

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The American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) is an economically and ecologically important species, which is currently categorized as endangered in Mexico. L. polyphemus, one of four extant horseshoe crab species that constitute the class Merostomata, is distributed along the Atlantic coastline of the USA from Alabama to Maine and has another population on the coastline of Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.

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Marine gastropods of the genus , comprising more than 800 species, have the characteristic of injecting worms and other prey with venom. These conopeptide toxins, highly diverse in structure and action, are highly potent and specific for their molecular targets (ion channels, receptors, and transporters of the prey's nervous system), and thus are important research tools and source for drug discovery. Next-generation sequencing technologies are speeding up the discovery of novel conopeptides in many of these species, but only limited information is available for , which inhabits sandy mud.

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The Pelibuey sheep has adaptability to climatic variations, resistance to parasites, and good maternal ability, whereas some ewes present multiple births, which increases the litter size in farm sheep. The litter size in some wool sheep breeds is associated with the presence of mutations, mainly in the family of the transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) genes. To explore genetic mechanisms underlying the variation in litter size, we conducted a genome-wide association study in two groups of Pelibuey sheep (multiparous sheep with two lambs per birth vs.

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The Pelibuey sheep () is an indigenous breed distributed in the tropical regions of Mexico. The prolificacy of this sheep is on average from 1 to 1.5 lambs, being an important breeding characteristic that owners seek to increase with the purpose of economic improvements.

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Chia (Salvia hispanica L.) is an annual short-day plant whose growth has not been studied extensively in low-altitudes and at temperatures outside of its optimal range. The objective of this study was to describe the growth dynamics of a chia crop from an experimental plantation in south-east Mexico, on three different sowing dates.

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Benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), the prototype of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, is known to exhibits genotoxic and carcinogenic effects promoting molecular impacts. The dataset presented here is associated with the research article paper entitled "Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Novel Insights Into the Response of Low-dose Benzo(a)pyrene Exposure in Male Tilapia". In this article, we presented a transcriptomic characterization of male tilapia exposure to BaP in the short term.

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Despite a wide number of toxicological studies that describe benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) effects, the metabolic mechanisms that underlie these effects in fish are largely unknown. Of great concern is the presence of BaP in aquatic systems, especially those in close proximity to human activity leading to consumption of potentially contaminated foods. BaP is a known carcinogen and it has been reported to have adverse effects on the survival, development and reproduction of fish.

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Background: The protozoan Perkinsus marinus (Mackin, Owen & Collier) Levine, 1978 causes perkinsosis in the American oyster Crassostrea virginica Gmelin, 1791. This pathogen is present in cultured C. virginica from the Gulf of Mexico and has been reported recently in Saccostrea palmula (Carpenter, 1857), Crassostrea corteziensis (Hertlein, 1951) and Crassostrea gigas (Thunberg, 1793) from the Mexican Pacific coast.

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This experiment was carried out to evaluate the effect of including five levels of discarded chia seed (DCS) on growth, energy, and economic efficiency in rabbits. Fifty crossbred (New Zealand × Californian) weaning rabbits, weighing 798 ± 170 g, were randomly assigned to the following treatments: 0 % (control), 10 % (Ch10), 20 % (Ch20), 30 % (Ch30), and 40 % (Ch40) of DCS. Ten unsexed rabbits were allocated to each treatment and housed individually in cages; the experimental period was 6 weeks.

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The effect of phenolic and carotenoid extracts from chiltepin fruits on mycelial growth and the inhibition of conidial germination of Alternaria alternata and Fusarium oxysporum were investigated in the present work. Phenolic extracts inhibited mycelial growth of A.alternata by 38.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Conus marine snails, found mainly in tropical areas, have about 500 species that use specialized venoms composed of peptides (called conotoxins) to catch prey and defend against threats.
  • - Conotoxins target specific proteins in the nervous system, such as ion channels and receptors, making them valuable for research and drug development due to their high specificity and affinity.
  • - The study focused on analyzing cDNAs encoding conotoxin precursors in three vermivorous Conus species from the Mexican Pacific, resulting in the identification of 30 distinct precursors with diverse predicted toxins targeting various nicotinic acetylcholine receptor types.
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The objective of the experiment was to compare the use of a PGF2α analogue (Cloprostenol) IM, with an intravaginal progestagen sponge, flurogestone acetate (FGA), and equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG) IM application protocol. A total of 30 cyclical hair ewes (54.07 ± 0.

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The pink conch Strombus gigas is an important fisheries resource in the Caribbean region, including the Yucatán Peninsula. We analyzed the genetic diversity and genetic structure of two populations (Alacranes Reef and Chinchorro Bank) with the use of five microsatellite molecular markers. The results indicate that the two populations are in the same rank of genetic diversity (He), from 0.

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Article Synopsis
  • - cDNA was generated from the venom duct of a Conus spurius specimen, leading to the cloning of ten distinct I-conotoxin precursors, including novel and previously characterized toxins (sr11a, sr11b, sr11c).
  • - The precursors possess complex structures with signal peptides, pro-regions, and a unique "post" region that contains a sequence for gamma-carboxylation, essential for modifying certain amino acids in the toxins.
  • - Phylogenetic analysis suggests that I(2)-like-conotoxins from C. spurius are closely related to I(2)-conotoxins, indicating potential for new subgroup classification within the broader I(2)-super
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cDNA was prepared from the venom duct of a single Conus spurius specimen collected near the coast of Campeche, Mexico. From it, PCR products were generated, sequenced, and predicted to encode eight distinct precursors of T-1-conotoxins. These precursors contain five different mature toxins, of which four are novel and one (sr5a) has been previously purified and characterized from the venom of this species.

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