news 2021

Populations of peninsular spiders that make aerial spider webs and move around the air by ballooning (using the silk threads as parachutes) present a more homogeneous genetics structure and are better connected between them. However, species of nocturnal spiders, which hunt on the ground and have a low dispersal capacity, show less genetically connected populations and are more vulnerable to local extinction processes due to environmental factors.

If the perspective of space and time is not properly applied to plant research, the understanding of biological processes is limited as well as the response to the threats that endanger the life of plants worldwide. This is one of the main conclusions of an article published in the journal Trends in Plant Science by Professor Sergi Munné-Bosch, from the Faculty of Biology , the Biodiversity Research Institute ( IRBio ) and the Institute for Nutrition and Food Safety ( INSA ) of the UB.

The technology has been developed by researchers from the Translational Synthetic Biology Laboratory at UPF led by Dr. Marc Güell. Find Cut-and-Transfer (FiCAT) is a tool capable of accurately writing small and large genes.

Alfonso Martínez Arias, head of the Stembryo Engineering Lab at UPF, participates in a review published in Science in which the authors offer offer a new perspective of the role of a structure in embryonic development known as the primitive streak. In a review published in the journal Science , the researchers Guojun Sheng (Kumamoto University, Japan), Alfonso Martínez Arias (UPF) and Ann Sutherland (University of Virginia Health System, USA) offer a new perspective of the role of a structure in embryonic development known as the primitive streak.

Research by Laura Baumgartner of the BCN MedTech Unit combines experimental research with mathematical and computational techniques to predict intervertebral disc degeneration. Lower back pain is the most widespread musculoskeletal problem in the population, with a huge economic and social impact. According to data for 2017 , years of living with disability due to lower back pain have increased by more than 50% since 1990, especially in lowand middle-income countries.

A study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science reveals the presence of murine coronavirus -the murine hepatitis virus or M-CoV- in mice of the Canary archipelago that could have reached the islands by maritime transport from the European continent. This is the first ecoepidemiological study to examine the presence of coronaviruses that circulate in mice and rats of the natural and urban environment of the islands of La Palma, El Hierro, Tenerife and Lanzarote.

The cover of this week's edition of Nature , with the eye-catching title "Matters of the heart", features a basic research study carried out exclusively by the Research Group on Evolution and Development (Evo-Devo) of the Genetics Section of the Faculty of Biology of the UB. The study deciphers one of the remaining enigmas about the transition between free and sedentary lifestyle in the ancestors of our own phylum: chordates.

UB researchers Montserrat Sanz and Joan Daura have studied the only remains of a calf in Europe, a species known as the straight-tusked elephant: Palaeoloxodon antiquus . The study has been carried out jointly with Maria Rita Palombo, of the Sapienza University of Rome and researcher at the Institute of Environmental Geology and Geoengineering of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR).

Sea urchins, albeit having a limited and ancestral sensory system, can show a complex behaviour when escaping a predator. These marine invertebrates tend to move slowly and with unpredictable movements, but when they smell a predator, they escape following a ballistic motion -straightforward, quick and directional- to escape the threat.

Alzheimer's disease is the main neurodegenerative disease in old people for which there is no treatment or efficient prevention yet. Current diagnostic methods do not detect one of the earliest and most relevant alterations of the disease: the degree of synaptic dysfunction that shows the neuronal damage.

Corpora amylacea (CA) are complex aggregates described in different organs and tissues associated with ageing and degenerative processes. Described for the first time in 1779 by Giovanni Battista Morgagni in the prostate and in 1837 by Jan Evangelista Purkinje in the brain, these were named corpora amylacea (in Latin, starch bodies) by Rudolf Vichow in 1854 for their similiarities with this polysaccharide.

To prosper, most great apes need lush forests in Africa (bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas) or Southeast Asia (orangutans), except for some groups of chimpanzees that live in savannahs, habitats characterised by high temperatures and very low seasonal rainfall. Adriana Hernández, Serra Hunter professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Barcelona, co-led the study conducted by an international team of primatologists who reviewed the existing research on the behaviour and ecology of savannah chimpanzees to understand how these apes adapt to extreme conditions.

Researchers led by Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, ICREA professor and principal investigator at UPF and the CNIC, describe a new mechanism for muscle repair after physiological damage relying on the rearrangement of muscle fibre nuclei, and independently of muscle stem cells. This protective mechanism paves the way to a broader understanding of muscle repair in physiology and disease.

Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón (IiSGM), and collaborators in Switzerland and Sweden, have developed a tool, called deepImageJ. The tools processes and analyses using models based on artificial intelligence biomedical images (for example, acquired with microscopes or radiological scanners), improving their quality or identifying and classifying specific elements in them, among other tasks.

Certain groupings of bacteria or cellular tissues form systems that are called active fluids. These can flow spontaneously without having to be forced from the outside, since their components are able to generate forces and move autonomously. When the activity is high enough, the spontaneous flows become chaotic, like those observed in the turbulence of ordinary fluids.

A study published in the journal Clinical Nutrition provides new knowledge on the health effects of a diet rich in nuts. According to the study, focused on the consumption of peanuts, the daily intake of products from this nut could have beneficial effects on the cognitive function and stress response in young and healthy individuals.

A study led by the UB with the participation of UPF has characterized an animal model of NDAN pathology, in which patients present senile plaques in the brain, but do not develop dementia. Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disease that features the accumulation of the beta-amyloid peptide and Tau protein in the brain, which are associated with deficits in the neuronal connections and with dementia.

A study published in the journal Pharmacological Research describes the existence of a complex built by dopamine and noradrenergic receptors that could be a therapeutic target of potential interest to tackle the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and impulsivity. The paper, a preclinical study, has been carried out by the Research Group on Molecular Neuropharmacology, under the supervision of the lecturer Vicent Casadó, from the Faculty of Biology and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona ( IBUB ).

The comparative genomic study, the largest to date, includes genetic and phenotypic information of 57 species of mammals and identifies the greater stability of proteins as a common feature in the longest-living species. What determines the life expectancy of each species? This is a fundamental and highly complex question that has intrigued the field of research throughout history.

A multidisciplinary team has managed to create a genetic circuit that allows living cells to reach critical states, stimulating new patterns of behavior. This study, published , may help to better understand the origin of cognition, and even improve the administration of drugs against tumors. These summer days it is very common to find children on the beach playing and making sand piles, creating bigger and bigger mounds, and observing the small avalanches that are created on their slopes.