Catálogo de publicaciones

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es estudiar y aprovechar la capacidad de distintas especies de microalgas para biosintetizar nanopartículas (NPs) de metales nobles (oro, platino y paladio), poniendo énfasis en los parámetros que controlan los procesos de nucleación y crecimiento. El trabajo se abordó desde dos enfoques complementarios: i) reducción química empleando biomoléculas que condicionan la morfología y dimensión de las NPs resultantes; ii) la biosíntesis a partir de los iones en solución mediada por microalgas en cultivos líquidos o encapsuladas en matrices de sílica y alginato. La motivación de esta tesis es contribuir al desarrollo de (bio)reactores para la recuperación de metales preciosos presentes en efluentes industriales o en aguas naturales. Tomando como punto de partida la síntesis de NPs de oro, de rápida caracterización espectroscópica, se trabajó con microalgas verdes para evaluar el rol del aparato fotosintético en los primeros estadíos de la reducción de los metales. Se utilizaron tres especies: Chlorella vulgaris, Kirchneriella lunaris y Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, consideradas modelo en estudios fotosintéticos y resistentes a altas concentraciones de cationes. Una diferencia importante entre éstas es el tipo de polisacárido que sintetizan, y su excreción y acumulación en la pared celular que pueden ser determinantes de la resistencia a la toxicidad de cationes y a la distribución de tamaño y/o de forma de las NPs biosintetizadas. Se analizaron las características morfológicas y dimensionales de las partículas y su dependencia con la concentración del catión, con el pH, con la especie utilizada y el tiempo del fotoperíodo. Se realizó un estudio sistemático de estas variables y se analizó el rol de pequeños hidratos de carbono y aminoácidos en la síntesis química de NPs de oro, pudiéndose determinar algunas de las condiciones de concentración de biomoléculas y pH que llevan a NPs cuasi esféricas de pocos nm o a “plateletas” triangulares de decenas de nm. A partir de estos resultados, se pudo establecer cualitativamente el rol de estas variables en los procesos de nucleación y crecimiento. A partir de la comprensión del proceso de reducción y posterior crecimiento de NPs de oro, se extendió esta metodología a NPs de platino y paladio, poco explorada con microalgas. La reducción de estos cationes tiene un mecanismo más complejo que involucra la formación intracelular de clusters que crecen tras ser excretados por las células. Por último, se estudió la biosíntesis de NPs metálicas mediada por microalgas encapsuladas en matrices de sílica y alginato. El estudio detallado de la interacción entre los cationes precursores, el alginato y la matriz mineral permitió la optimización de estas plataformas para la biosíntesis en espacios confinados. La difusión desde el medio externo de cationes nobles y la biosíntesis exitosa de NPs por las microalgas encapsuladas resulta en un avance prometedor hacia la utilización de microorganismos encapsulados para la recuperación de metales.

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Formation and Fate of Cell Organelles presents the proceedings of the symposia of the International Society for Cell Biology. Contributors offer their views on various aspects of the problem of spontaneous assembly, particularly how cellular structures arise from the component molecules. They consider whether all cellular organelles and cells, themselves, can arise by spontaneous assembly, or whether some regulation is involved and the mechanisms underlying such regulation.
This book is organized into 16 chapters and begins with an overview of self-assembling systems of equal units and how they can be built efficiently, focusing on quasi-equivalence and helical waves on bacterial flagella. This text also discusses the differences in free energy of the molecules in their various states and the use of the free energy of a particular array of molecules to predict what arrays will form. The reader is introduced to intermolecular forces and how macromolecular lipid structures assemble in vitro, along with developments in the resolution of the spindle fibers of the mitotic apparatus. The book also looks into the mechanisms underlying the disposition of microtubules in plant cells during interphase and mitosis, and then concludes with a chapter on some studies dealing with cytoplasmic genes and cytoplasmic inheritance.
This book is a valuable source of information for scientists and researchers engaged in fields ranging from cytology and biology to chemistry, pathology, and biophysics.

Formative Assessment, Learning Data Analytics and Gamification: An ICT Education discusses the challenges associated with assessing student progress given the explosion of e-learning environments, such as MOOCs and online courses that incorporate activities such as design and modeling. This book shows educators how to effectively garner intelligent data from online educational environments that combine assessment and gamification.

This data, when used effectively, can have a positive impact on learning environments and be used for building learner profiles, community building, and as a tactic to create a collaborative team. Using numerous illustrative examples and theoretical and practical results, leading international experts discuss application of automatic techniques for e-assessment of learning activities, methods to collect, analyze, and correctly visualize learning data in educational environments, applications, benefits and challenges of using gamification techniques in academic contexts, and solutions and strategies for increasing student participation and performance.

• Discusses application of automatic techniques for e-assessment of learning activities
• Presents strategies to provide immediate and useful feedback on students’ activities
• Provides methods to collect, analyze, and correctly visualize learning data in educational environments
• Explains the applications, benefits, and challenges of using gamification techniques in academic contexts
• Offers solutions to increase students’ participation and performance while lowering drop-out rates and retention levels

Desarrollo de un modelo matemático para estudio de la homeostasis de la proteína alfa-2-macroglobulina en al rata.

FORWARD to Professorship in STEM: Inclusive Faculty Development Strategies That Work provides best practices on how to design and implement inclusive workshops aimed at supporting faculty and staff in their career development.

The book addresses fundamental skills and strategies to excel in academia, with a focus on assisting women and other underrepresented groups to succeed in obtaining tenure-track faculty positions, and in acquiring tenure.

Contributors from wide geographical, disciplinary, and career backgrounds offer their insights on challenges in academia, lessons learned, successes, and outcomes, with chapters devoted to tenure and beyond, collaborations and funding, impact on, and of, the deaf culture, and engaging differences.

• Offers insights from a variety of institutions, STEM disciplines, and backgrounds
• Contains valuable information on diversity, leadership, minorities, work-life satisfaction, and professional career development
• Provides best practices on how to design and implement inclusive workshops aimed at supporting faculty and staff in their career development
• Covers topics such as tenure and beyond, collaborations and funding, impact on, and of, the deaf culture, and engaging differences
• Provides specific avenues and processes for implementing inclusive professional development workshops
• Includes appendices on budgeting and programming examples

Fungi are ubiquitous in the world and responsible for driving the evolution and governing the sustainability of ecosystems now and in the past. Fossil Fungi is the first encyclopedic book devoted exclusively to fossil fungi and their activities through geologic time. The book begins with the historical context of research on fossil fungi (paleomycology), followed by how fungi are formed and studied as fossils, and their age. The next six chapters focus on the major lineages of fungi, arranging them in phylogenetic order and placing the fossils within a systematic framework. For each fossil the age and provenance are provided.

Each chapter provides a detailed introduction to the living members of the group and a discussion of the fossils that are believed to belong in this group. The extensive bibliography (~ 2700 entries) includes papers on both extant and fossil fungi. Additional chapters include lichens, fungal spores, and the interactions of fungi with plants, animals, and the geosphere. The final chapter includes a discussion of fossil bacteria and other organisms that are fungal-like in appearance, and known from the fossil record. The book includes more than 475 illustrations, almost all in color, of fossil fungi, line drawings, and portraits of people, as well as a glossary of more than 700 mycological and paleontological terms that will be useful to both biologists and geoscientists.

• First book devoted to the whole spectrum of the fossil record of fungi, ranging from Proterozoic fossils to the role of fungi in rock weathering
• Detailed discussion of how fossil fungi are preserved and studied
• Extensive bibliography with more than 2000 entries
• Where possible, fungal fossils are placed in a modern systematic context
• Each chapter within the systematic treatment of fungal lineages introduced with an easy-to-understand presentation of the main characters that define extant members
• Extensive glossary of more than 700 entries that define both biological, geological, and mycological terminology