El presente trabajo realizó un estudio cuantitativo de la representación de género en cinco videojuegos de acción multiplataforma líderes en ventas de la séptima generación, mediante la técnica de ...análisis de contenido. Se analizó la totalidad de la narrativa central de cada uno de los títulos, utilizando el personaje como unidad de análisis y la misión como unidad de registro, entendiendo esta como cada sección del juego en la cual el jugador requiere lograr un objetivo para progresar en la narrativa. Se categorizaron la apariencia física, comportamiento, lenguaje y vestimenta de personajes primarios, secundarios y terciarios tanto masculinos como femeninos. El estudio encontró una proporción de 4,1 personajes masculinos por cada personaje femenino, lo cual constituye una grave subrepresentación del género femenino en estos títulos. También se encontraron diferencias significativas tanto de representación física como de comportamiento entre personajes masculinos y femeninos. En lo que respecta a la apariencia física, se encontró que los atuendos de los personajes femeninos son notablemente más reveladores que los de los personajes masculinos. En cuanto al comportamiento, se encontró en los personajes femeninos una mayor presencia de conductas sexualizadas y una menor seguridad, violencia y actitud de liderazgo que en sus contrapartes masculinos. Se comenta que, a pesar de lo encontrado, la representación de género en el medio ha mejorado con respecto a investigaciones realizadas con anterioridad, y que es necesario investigar la manera en que los jugadores se relacionan con estos contenidos.
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) represent a vast array of molecules produced by virtually all living organisms as natural barriers against infection. Among AMP sources, an interesting class regards the ...food-derived bioactive agents. The whey protein lactoferrin (Lf) is an iron-binding glycoprotein that plays a significant role in the innate immune system, and is considered as an important host defense molecule. In search for novel antimicrobial agents, Lf offers a new source with potential pharmaceutical applications. The Lf-derived peptides Lf(1-11), lactoferricin (Lfcin) and lactoferrampin exhibit interesting and more potent antimicrobial actions than intact protein. Particularly, Lfcin has demonstrated strong antibacterial, anti-fungal and antiparasitic activity with promising applications both in human and veterinary diseases (from ocular infections to osteo-articular, gastrointestinal and dermatological diseases).
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about bereavement overload as a risk factor for complicated grief. Bereavement overload (BO) describes individuals’ reactions to losses transpiring in a quick ...succession, without the time and opportunity for coping 9. It can occur during catastrophic events and impact everyone experiencing the loss.
With the high death toll from COVID-19, many people have lost multiple loved ones followed by an abbreviated grieving process due to the nature of the pandemic. This can have psychosocial impact on survivors for years. One of the evolving roles of Palliative Care within and after the pandemic should be to recognize those suffering from BO. Obtaining loss histories may identify those at risk of pathologic grief to provide preventive bereavement care.
We present three cases encountered in our health system during the COVID-19 pandemic amongst a family member, a patient, and a healthcare provider. In each case the Palliative Care Team worked closely with these individuals to identify COVID-associated BO and helped them reconcile their unresolved grief to be able to move forward. These cases reflect only a fraction of those who experienced loss during the pandemic, but they illustrate how grief can be complicated by the pandemic for everyone involved.
Palliative Care will have a crucial role moving forward, in treating the pandemic of complicated grief within the pandemic to adapt to the needs of all survivors, as we realize the effects of COVID will last long after its virulence has waned.
Abstract
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a prominent class of eukaryotic regulatory genes. Despite the numerous available transcriptomic datasets, the annotation of plant lncRNAs remains based on ...dated annotations that have been historically carried over. We present a substantially improved annotation of
Arabidopsis thaliana
lncRNAs, generated by integrating 224 transcriptomes in multiple tissues, conditions, and developmental stages. We annotate 6764 lncRNA genes, including 3772 that are novel. We characterize their tissue expression patterns and find 1425 lncRNAs are co-expressed with coding genes, with enriched functional categories such as chloroplast organization, photosynthesis, RNA regulation, transcription, and root development. This improved transcription-guided annotation constitutes a valuable resource for studying lncRNAs and the biological processes they may regulate.
Modularity in Biological Networks Alcalá-Corona, Sergio Antonio; Sandoval-Motta, Santiago; Espinal-Enríquez, Jesús ...
Frontiers in genetics,
09/2021, Volume:
12
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Network modeling, from the ecological to the molecular scale has become an essential tool for studying the structure, dynamics and complex behavior of living systems. Graph representations of the ...relationships between biological components open up a wide variety of methods for discovering the mechanistic and functional properties of biological systems. Many biological networks are organized into a modular structure, so methods to discover such modules are essential if we are to understand the biological system as a whole. However, most of the methods used in biology to this end, have a limited applicability, as they are very specific to the system they were developed for. Conversely, from the statistical physics and network science perspective, graph modularity has been theoretically studied and several methods of a very general nature have been developed. It is our perspective that in particular for the modularity detection problem, biology and theoretical physics/network science are less connected than they should. The central goal of this review is to provide the necessary background and present the most applicable and pertinent methods for community detection in a way that motivates their further usage in biological research.
Breast cancer is a heterogeneous and complex disease, a clear manifestation of this is its classification into different molecular subtypes. On the other hand, gene transcriptional networks may ...exhibit different modular structures that can be related to known biological processes. Thus, modular structures in transcriptional networks may be seen as manifestations of regulatory structures that tightly controls biological processes. In this work, we identify modular structures on gene transcriptional networks previously inferred from microarray data of molecular subtypes of breast cancer: luminal A, luminal B, basal, and HER2-enriched. We analyzed the modules (communities) found in each network to identify particular biological functions (described in the Gene Ontology database) associated to them. We further explored these modules and their associated functions to identify common and unique features that could allow a better level of description of breast cancer, particularly in the basal-like subtype, the most aggressive and poor prognosis manifestation. Our findings related to the immune system and a decrease in cell death-related processes in basal subtype could help to understand it and design strategies for its treatment.
HER2-enriched breast cancer is a complex disease characterized by the overexpression of the ERBB2 amplicon. While the effects of this genomic aberration on the pathology have been studied, ...genome-wide deregulation patterns in this subtype of cancer are also observed. A novel approach to the study of this malignant neoplasy is the use of transcriptional networks. These networks generally exhibit modular structures, which in turn may be associated to biological processes. This modular regulation of biological functions may also exhibit a hierarchical structure, with deeper levels of modular organization accounting for more specific functional regulation. In this work, we identified the most probable (maximum likelihood) model of the hierarchical modular structure of the HER2-enriched transcriptional network as reconstructed from gene expression data, and analyzed the statistical associations of modules and submodules to biological functions. We found modular structures, independent from direct ERBB2 amplicon regulation, involved in different biological functions such as signaling, immunity, and cellular morphology. Higher resolution submodules were identified in more specific functions, such as micro-RNA regulation and the activation of viral-like immune response. We propose the approach presented here as one that may help to unveil mechanisms involved in the development of the pathology.
Abstract
Cycads are the only early seed plants that have evolved a specialized root to host endophytic bacteria that fix nitrogen. To provide evolutionary and functional insights into this ...million-year old symbiosis, we investigate endophytic bacterial sub-communities isolated from coralloid roots of species from Dioon (Zamiaceae) sampled from their natural habitats. We employed a sub-community co-culture experimental strategy to reveal both predominant and rare bacteria, which were characterized using phylogenomics and detailed metabolic annotation. Diazotrophic plant endophytes, including Bradyrhizobium, Burkholderia, Mesorhizobium, Rhizobium, and Nostoc species, dominated the epiphyte-free sub-communities. Draft genomes of six cyanobacteria species were obtained after shotgun metagenomics of selected sub-communities. These data were used for whole-genome inferences that suggest two Dioon-specific monophyletic groups, and a level of specialization characteristic of co-evolved symbiotic relationships. Furthermore, the genomes of these cyanobacteria were found to encode unique biosynthetic gene clusters, predicted to direct the synthesis of specialized metabolites, mainly involving peptides. After combining genome mining with detection of pigment emissions using multiphoton excitation fluorescence microscopy, we also show that Caulobacter species co-exist with cyanobacteria, and may interact with them by means of a novel indigoidine-like specialized metabolite. We provide an unprecedented view of the composition of the cycad coralloid root, including phylogenetic and functional patterns mediated by specialized metabolites that may be important for the evolution of ancient symbiotic adaptations.
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