The High Risk of Bivalve Farming in Coastal Areas With Heavy Metal Pollution and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria: A Chilean Perspective.

Anthropogenic pollution has a huge impact on the water quality of marine ecosystems. Heavy metals and antibiotics are anthropogenic stressors that have a major effect on the health of the marine organisms. Although heavy metals are also associate with volcanic eruptions, wind erosion or evaporation, most of them come from industrial and urban waste. Such contamination, coupled to the use and subsequent misuse of antimicrobials in aquatic environments, is an important stress factor capable of affecting the marine communities in the ecosystem. Bivalves are important ecological components of the oceanic environments and can bioaccumulate pollutants during their feeding through water filtration, acting as environmental sentinels. However, heavy metals and antibiotics pollution can affect several of their physiologic and immunological processes, including their microbiome. In fact, heavy metals and antibiotics have the potential to select resistance genes in bacteria, including those that are part of the microbiota of bivalves, such as Vibrio spp. Worryingly, antibiotic-resistant phenotypes have been shown to be more tolerant to heavy metals, and vice versa, which probably occurs through co- and cross-resistance pathways. In this regard, a crucial role of heavy metal resistance genes in the spread of mobile element-mediated antibiotic resistance has been suggested. Thus, it might be expected that antibiotic resistance of Vibrio spp. associated with bivalves would be higher in contaminated environments. In this review, we focused on co-occurrence of heavy metal and antibiotic resistance in Vibrio spp. In addition, we explore the Chilean situation with respect to the contaminants described above, focusing on the main bivalves-producing region for human consumption, considering bivalves as potential vehicles of antibiotic resistance genes to humans through the ingestion of contaminated seafood.

The Sall2 transcription factor promotes cell migration regulating focal adhesion turnover and integrin ß1 expression.

SALL2/Sall2 is a transcription factor associated with development, neuronal differentiation, and cancer. Interestingly, SALL2/Sall2 deficiency leads to failure of the optic fissure closure and neurite outgrowth, suggesting a positive role for SALL2/Sall2 in cell migration. However, in some cancer cells, SALL2 deficiency is associated with increased cell migration. To further investigate the role of Sall2 in the cell migration process, we used immortalized Sall2 knockout (Sall2 -/- ) and Sall2 wild-type (Sall2 +/+ ) mouse embryonic fibroblasts (iMEFs). Our results indicated that Sall2 positively regulates cell migration, promoting cell detachment and focal adhesions turnover. Sall2 deficiency decreased cell motility and altered focal adhesion dynamics. Accordingly, restoring Sall2 expression in the Sall2 -/- iMEFs by using a doxycycline-inducible Tet-On system recovered cell migratory capabilities and focal adhesion dynamics. In addition, Sall2 promoted the autophosphorylation of Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) at Y397 and increased integrin ß1 mRNA and its protein expression at the cell surface. We demonstrated that SALL2 increases ITGB1 promoter activity and binds to conserved SALL2-binding sites at the proximal region of the ITGB1 promoter, validated by ChIP experiments. Furthermore, the overexpression of integrin ß1 or its blockade generates a cell migration phenotype similar to that of Sall2 +/+ or Sall2 -/- cells, respectively. Altogether, our data showed that Sall2 promotes cell migration by modulating focal adhesion dynamics, and this phenotype is associated with SALL2/Sall2-transcriptional regulation of integrin ß1 expression and FAK autophosphorylation. Since deregulation of cell migration promotes congenital abnormalities, tumor formation, and spread to other tissues, our findings suggest that the SALL2/Sall2-integrin ß1 axis could be relevant for those processes.

SALL Proteins; Common and Antagonistic Roles in Cancer.

SALL proteins are a family of four conserved C2H2 zinc finger transcription factors that play critical roles in organogenesis during embryonic development. They regulate cell proliferation, survival, migration, and stemness; consequently, they are involved in various human genetic disorders and cancer. SALL4 is a well-recognized oncogene; however, SALL1-3 play dual roles depending on the cancer context and stage of the disease. Current reviews of SALLs have focused only on SALL2 or SALL4, lacking an integrated view of the SALL family members in cancer. Here, we update the recent advances of the SALL members in tumor development, cancer progression, and therapy, highlighting the synergistic and/or antagonistic functions they perform in similar cancer contexts. We identified common regulatory mechanisms, targets, and signaling pathways in breast, brain, liver, colon, blood, and HPV-related cancers. In addition, we discuss the potential of the SALL family members as cancer biomarkers and in the cancer cells' response to therapies. Understanding SALL proteins' function and relationship will open new cancer biology, clinical research, and therapy perspectives.

Fam83F induces p53 stabilisation and promotes its activity.

p53 is one of the most important tumour suppressor proteins currently known. It is activated in response to DNA damage and this activation leads to proliferation arrest and cell death. The abundance and activity of p53 are tightly controlled and reductions in p53's activity can contribute to the development of cancer. Here, we show that Fam83F increases p53 protein levels by protein stabilisation. Fam83F interacts with p53 and decreases its ubiquitination and degradation. Fam83F is induced in response to DNA damage and its overexpression also increases p53 activity in cell culture experiments and in zebrafish embryos. Downregulation of Fam83F decreases transcription of p53 target genes in response to DNA damage and increases cell proliferation, identifying Fam83F as an important regulator of the DNA damage response. Overexpression of Fam83F also enhances migration of cells harbouring mutant p53 demonstrating that it can also activate mutant forms of p53.

Ecotomografía renal como estudio inicial de malformaciones urológicas en niños hospitalizados por infección del tracto urinario / Renal ecotomography as initial study in hospitalized children for presenting urinary tract infection

La Infección del Tracto Urinario (ITU) es una de las patologías infecciosas más frecuentes en pediatría. Como factores de riesgo más relevantes se encuentran el reflujo vesicoureteral y las malformaciones urogenitales. El estudio con imágenes es imprescindible para detectar posibles anomalías del tracto urinario, demostrando la ecografía la mejor correlación costo-beneficio. Objetivo: Describir las características y resultados de las ecografías renales y vesicales de pacientes hospitalizados por ITU en el Hospital San Martín de Quillota (HSMQ) en el año 2014. Material y métodos: Estudio descriptivo; estudio de casos, se incluyó a niños hospitalizados en el servicio de pediatría del HSMQ durante el año 2014, ingresados con diagnóstico de ITU. Resultados: Ingresos por ITU: 99 pacientes, excluyéndose 27 casos con un número total de 72 pacientes; de estos, 71 % fueron de sexo femenino, 76% lactantes. Del total de ecografías, 55% resultaron normales, 3 1% compatibles con Pielonefritis Aguda (PNA) y 14% con alteración anatómica, siendo lo más frecuente el doble sistema pielocalicial. Discusión: Hubo similitud entre la información entregada por la literatura de un 12 a 15% de ecografías alteradas y un 14% en este estudio.

The Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) is one of the most common infectious diseases in children. Vesicouretral reflux and urogenital malformations are amongst the most significant risk factors. The imagenological studies are essential to detect possible anatomical or functional urological abnormalities. Within them, renal ultrasound (US) has the best cost-benefit relation. Objective: Describe the characteristics and results of renal and vesical ultrasound done on patients hospitalized in Hospital San Miguel de Quillota (HSMQ) during 2014, diagnosed with UTI. Material and methods: Descriptive study, cases study includes hospitalized children under the diagnose of UTI in the Pediatric Service of HSMQ during 2014. Results: 99 patients entered with the diagnose of UTI, 27 cases were excluded,with 72 patient which met the inclusion criteria:71% of them were female and 76% were infants. From the total of US, 55% were normal, 3 1% showed acute pyelonephritis (APN) and 14% anatomical abnormalities, where duplicated collecting system was the highest frequency condition. Discussion: There were similar results in literature that showed 12-15% of altered ultrasound compared to 14% obtained in this study.