Browsing by Author "Allende, Miguel"

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    Genome-scale metabolic models of Microbacterium species isolated from a high altitude desert environment
    (2020) Mandakovic, Dinka; Cintolesi, Angela; Maldonado, Jonathan; Mendoza, Sebastian N.; Aite, Meziane; Gaete, Alexis; Saitua, Francisco; Allende, Miguel; Cambiazo, Veronica; Siegel, Anne; Maass, Alejandro; Gonzalez, Mauricio; Latorre, Mauricio
    The Atacama Desert is the most arid desert on Earth, focus of important research activities related to microbial biodiversity studies. In this context, metabolic characterization of arid soil bacteria is crucial to understand their survival strategies under extreme environmental stress. We investigated whether strain-specific features of two Microbacterium species were involved in the metabolic ability to tolerate/adapt to local variations within an extreme desert environment. Using an integrative systems biology approach we have carried out construction and comparison of genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) of two Microbacterium sp., CGR1 and CGR2, previously isolated from physicochemically contrasting soil sites in the Atacama Desert. Despite CGR1 and CGR2 belong to different phylogenetic clades, metabolic pathways and attributes are highly conserved in both strains. However, comparison of the GEMs showed significant differences in the connectivity of specific metabolites related to pH tolerance and CO2 production. The latter is most likely required to handle acidic stress through decarboxylation reactions. We observed greater GEM connectivity within Microbacterium sp. CGR1 compared to CGR2, which is correlated with the capacity of CGR1 to tolerate a wider pH tolerance range. Both metabolic models predict the synthesis of pigment metabolites (beta -carotene), observation validated by HPLC experiments. Our study provides a valuable resource to further investigate global metabolic adaptations of bacterial species to grow in soils with different abiotic factors within an extreme environment.
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    Zebrafish as an emerging model organism to study angiogenesis in development and regeneration
    (2016) Chávez, Myra; Aedo, Geraldine; Fierro, Fernando; Allende, Miguel; Egaña, José Tomás
    Angiogenesis is the process through which new blood vessels are formed from preexisting ones and plays a critical role in several conditions including embryonic development, tissue repair and disease. Moreover, enhanced therapeutic angiogenesis is a major goal in the field of regenerative medicine and efficient vascularization of artificial tissues and organs is one of the main hindrances in the implementation of tissue engineering approaches, while, on the other hand, inhibition of angiogenesis is a key therapeutic target to inhibit for instance tumor growth. During the last decades, the understanding of cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in this process has been matter of intense research. In this regard, several in vitro and in vivo models have been established to visualize and study migration of endothelial progenitor cells, formation of endothelial tubules and the generation of new vascular networks, while assessing the conditions and treatments that either promote or inhibit such processes. In this review, we address and compare the most commonly used experimental models to study angiogenesis in vitro and in vivo. In particular, we focus on the implementation of the zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a model to study angiogenesis and discuss the advantages and not yet explored possibilities of its use as model organism.