Biofilms are complex microbial communities in which a single species of microorganism can subsist or, commonly, can be polymicrobial, in which a great diversity of bacteria and fungi can be contained. These aggregates consist of a set of microorganisms embedded in a viscous matrix consisting mainly of sugars and proteins. Tests were carried out with the ERIC oligos in order to analyze and know the existing genomic diversity; resulting in only one common ancestor and two generations. It is worth mentioning that the most important characteristics are preserved, including ica genes, but only from the second to the third generation.

Welcome to the MODEC2019 workshop. This is Amazon State University's (UEA) fourth workshop, devoted to the promotion and application of the Multidisciplinary Sciences to the development of natural products and agro-industrial processes in Ecuadorian Amazon regions. This includes the application of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) for data analysis and computational model including the fields of Agro-industrial Engineering, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biotechnology, Veterinary Medicine, and/or Environmental Sciences, etc. We invite you to visit the official web of the workshop: https://sciforum.net/conference/mol2net-05/modec-04

The overall purpose of the study was describing of the component morphological behaviour of the vegetal material as Tithonia diversifolia. In this case, it was used statistical criteria for modelling, where best-fit models were selected. Different linear and non-linear models were adjusted to know the variable behavior of seedling height (cm), 100 sheet weight (g MV), total weight of plant (green matter, g) and total weight of a linear meter (g green matter), which were taken during the rainy and dry seasons in the Granma province from Cuba. The data were processed in the softwares Statistical Infostat (2001) and IBM - SPSS (V22). In the rainy season, height and weight of 1 m seedlings fitted the linear model, where higher values were reached at the 18th weeks with 174.98 cm and 4927.3 g, respectively. Moreover, weight of 100 sheets MV was adjusted to the quadratic model with a value of 220.59 g at 14th weeks. On the other hand, total weight of plant continued to increase at 18th weeks, reaching 109.70 g. (este valor no coincide con lo anterior) In the dry season, the variables presented significant adjustments for the exponential model and expressed slow behavior during the first three measurements, increasing from 10th to 18th week. Where, the weight of 100 green leaves increased to values above 300 g at 18th week. Last of all, this article reports for the first time about the growth of T. diversifolia in the eastern part of Cuba.

This communication presents a preliminary update on pharmacologically evaluated flavonoids under several aspects including: structure-structure associations, structure-activity trends and structure-plant affiliations. Although pharmacological evaluations are continuously performed on secondary metabolites, a small fraction of published (elucidated) molecules were revealed to be concerned with lab testing. This resulted in strongly sparse information in literature that did not favor integrative work in this field. While sparse data don’t favor intensive analysis of well target system (e.g. a given pharmacological activity of a given metabolic family associated with a given plant taxon), big sets of cumulated data from many origins provide alternative way for extensive analysis helping to highlight backbone information on a target biochemical system. This principle was applied to highlight different structural, functional and chemotaxonomical aspects of pharmacologically evaluated flavonoids from 285 molecules belonging to different flavonoid families and originated from different plant taxa. (i) Significant variations of relative frequencies of different chemical groups (OH, OCH₃, glycosyls, prenyl) in different flavonoid aglycone (structure-structure associations). (ii) Clear structural differentiation ways of different plant families characterized by relatively high frequencies of some aglycones and chemical groups. (iii) Positive and negative effects of some chemical groups (occurring in some carbons of aglycones) on some pharmacological activities. Anti-inflammatory (If) and antidiabetic (Db) activities were considered because of more available data. The work calls for further investigations in pharmacological evaluations of flavonoids. It is openly ready for further updates by considering more biologically evaluated flavonoids as they are published.

PANELFIT’s Official Newsletter, H2020, Europe Commission Project, Number 01 , May, 2019. The vertiginous transformations placed in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), and their impact on society, lead to significant changes in regulation landscape. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), The Data Protection Law Enforcement Directive (EU) 2016/680 so called “police directive”, or the Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems (NIS Directive), are just examples of this. Such normative, which has as a background, the defence of fundamental rights of European citizens who may be affected by inappropriate use of ICTs, requires an understanding and adaptation by all sectors at stake, which is not easy at all. PANELFIT project, funded by the European Union Framework Program Horizon 2020, is designed to assist in this difficult process of adaptation with a set of editable, openly accessible guidelines. Once completed, these guidelines shall serve as operational standards, capable of reducing ethical and legal problems posed by information and communication technologies while fostering innovation and market growth. Data commercialization, informed consent and security, are the three pillars on which PANELFIT will mainly concentrate. But the project intend to go further, it is moving to identify the key topics or issues on which a new or amended ethical and legal framework should focus on and uses these topics as concrete case studies to identify the key issues. In the EU nomenclature, this project is inserted in the ‘Science with and for Society’ program (SwafS), it means that PENELFIT initiative ‘will be instrumental in addressing the European societal challenges tackled by Horizon 2020, building capacities and developing innovative ways of connecting science to society´. That is why, all project´s outcomes will be developed in a broad, participatory co-creation process.

PANELFIT’s Official Newsletter, H2020, Europe Commission Project, Number 02 , July, 2019. PANELFIT project members organized the second Consortium meeting in Brussels at the end of May. Partners discussed the strategies of the different and varied actions included in this initiative, which aims to facilitate the implementation of the GDPR through operational standards and practical guidelines that reduce the problems of ICT technologies in legal and ethical aspects, especially from the perspective of privacy. In addition to the confirmation of all documentation related to the project was delivered in time and form, an overview of the current status of the activities and work packages was carried out as well as planning the next steps. Furthermore, a workshop on Governance of ICT Data Protection ELI was held, in which sufficient information was provided to generate the basis for the report. Questions about the structure and end-users of The Guidelines, the Dissemination tools, the organization of the first MOOCS and the Handbook for data journalists were also addressed. The meeting also served to introduce the Workshops that would take place at the beginning of June in Bilbao.

The aqueous solubility plays a key role in the biological processes that involved ionizable molecules like drugs, particularly, in the design and development of pharmaceutical formulations oriented to oral administration. Taking into account that experimental determination of aqueous solubility presents several limitations, like the elevated inverted time and the consumption of considerable quantities of sample, the use of structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies has been suggested. These are intended to defined the function able to predict specific properties of a compound, using the information contained in their molecular descriptors. Therefore, it is possible to examine a great quantity of molecules in a minor time and with less resources. Then, the present work was oriented to obtain mathematical models for the prediction of aqueous solubility in pH range from 3.5 to 5.0. After processing a training serie of 602 compounds divided into five chemically different sub-series, five mathematical models were defined. In general, these models demonstrated a good prediction capacity after external testing. Four of them exhibited standard error of estimate inferior or close to the logarithmic unit. Also, the external prediction coefficients were superior to 0.8. Finally, the results obtained suggest these models for the design and development of new oral medicaments.

Torilis leptophylla commonly known as bristle fruit hedge parsley is widely acknowledged for its potential to treat liver and gastrointestinal disorders. Till today no scientific evidence has been reported to support this claim. So the present investigation was carried out to get an inclusive picture of volatile phytoconstituents of Torilis leptophylla. Hyphenated chromatographic technique revealed the presence of 11 VOC’s from n-Hexane extract and 5 from chloroform extract. Identified compounds belonged to different classes including terpenes, esters, phenols, hydrocarbons and alcohols. Among alcohols, falcarinol was revealed to be a de-novo antifungal agent not previously reported in the genus Torilis. These analytical/structural chemical investigations highlighted a first metabolic pattern associated with the use of this plant as a folk medicine for the cure of various infectious diseases. Moreover, they ratified that the metabolic pool of phytochemicals can play a noteworthy role in drug discovery and development.

Experimental determination of aqueous solubility is affected by long time invested and consumption of considerable amounts of sample. To solve these problems, QSPR studies have been applied, in order to establish quantitative relationships between the structure and some property of the molecule of interest, by means of a function capable of predicting a certain quality of a compound. Considering that solubility of orally-administered drugs is influenced by the strongly acid pH of the gastrointestinal tract, obtaining predictive models based on pH is of great interest, which was the purpose of the present study. Then, some computer programs were used: ACDLabs (construction of the training series), MODESLAB (calculation of molecular descriptors), IBM SPSS Statistics (data reduction) and BuildQSAR (obtaining and optimization of predictive models). Finally, 24 mathematical models (M) for the prediction of the aqueous solubility of organic compounds of pharmaceutical interest were defined, by ranges of pH (1-1.3, 1.4-1.7, 1.8-2.1 and 2.2-2.5) and by group of chemical behavior. The relative simplicity along with correlation coefficients and standard errors of estimate close to the unity, suggest the external evaluation of models M3-M5 and M11-M22 and their subsequent use as part of the design and development of orally-administered medications.

Soil is an essential natural resource for life, which has been affected by economic activities such as oil exploitation [1]. Around one million cubic meters of soil contaminated with hydrocarbons from the Ecuadorian Amazon has been bioremediated through the “Amazon Live” Project of PETROAMAZONAS EP. However, the clay soil, characteristic of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is compacted and generates moisture and oxygenation problems, which constitutes an adverse environment for the development of microorganisms [2]. Among the adaptive mechanisms are the production of exopolysaccharides (EPS), compounds generated by many microorganisms in response to hostile environmental conditions. The EPS can interact with clay particles to form micro and macro-aggregates of soil and, therefore, increases water retention and reduces desiccation [3]. Precisely, fluorescent bacteria of the genus Pseudomonas are commonly found in soils contaminated with hydrocarbons and can form protective biofilms, mostly composed of EPS [4].

Four fluorescent isolates were recovered from clay soil samples, which were phenotypically characterized by colonial morphology, fluorescence under UV light, Gram staining and oxidase and catalase tests. Soon, biochemical identification with API 20 NE will be carried out, and molecular confirmation through the analysis of 16S rRNA. The isolates were used to produce EPS with different carbon sources. A King B Agar base was used and the 2% carbon source (glycerol, glucose, sucrose and molasses) was added. The abiotic stress conditions were carried out in King B broth with glycerol and adjusted to the respective stress conditions: salinity (0 M, 0.5 M, 1.0 M and 1.5 M), pH (5, 6, 7 and 8) and temperature (27 ° C, 35 ° C and 42 ° C). A 0.5 McFarland concentration of each isolate was inoculated and incubated for 72 hours at 27 ° C, except in the temperature experiment. EPS extraction was performed with glass beads, 96% cold ethanol and centrifugation. All treatments of each experiment were performed in triplicate. The quantification of EPS was carried out by the modified phenol-sulfuric acid method of Dubois, after performing a glucose calibration curve.

Based on the results obtained, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. Isolates 1 and 2 produced a higher amount of EPS with molasses, isolate 3 with glycerol and isolate 4 with sucrose as a carbon source. In terms of temperature, isolates 1, 3 and 4 produced a greater amount of EPS between 27-35 ° C, while isolate 2 at 42 ° C. According to the pH, the best production was observed at a neutral and slightly acidic pH. Finally, regarding salinity, it was observed that isolate 1 and 2 produced a higher amount of EPS at a concentration of 0.5 M sodium chloride, and isolate 3 and 4 with 0 M sodium chloride. The results show that EPS production is influenced by the source of carbon and environmental conditions. The best performance in EPS production is obtained at least under an abiotic stress condition. These changes represent adaptive changes of bacteria against conditions of abiotic stress. Their tolerance depends on the fact that these microorganisms can be used in the improvement of the clay soil structure to favor bioremediation processes in the Amazon.