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Plants have acquired a repertoire of mechanisms to combat biotic stressors, which may vary depending on the feeding strategies of herbivores and the plant species. Hormonal regulation crucially modulates this malleable defense response. Jasmonic acid (JA) and salicylic acid (SA) stand out as pivotal regulators of defense, while other hormones like abscisic acid (ABA), ethylene (ET), gibberellic acid (GA) or auxin also play a role in modulating plant-pest interactions. The plant defense response has been described to elicit effects in distal tissues, whereby aboveground herbivory can influence belowground response, and vice versa. This impact on distal tissues may be contingent upon the feeding guild, even affecting both the recovery of infested tissues and those that have not suffered active infestation.

La tesis presenta importantes hallazgos e implicaciones para la gestión de la reputación online de las empresas exportadoras de alimentos en los mercados B2B y su relación con el marketing de la sostenibilidad. La tesis contribuye al desarrollo de la teoría de la reputación online en las exportaciones B2B del sector alimentos, un campo pocamente estudiado a diferencia de publicaciones previas en el contexto B2C. Como parte de la tesis se definen los determinantes de la reputación online que afectan el volumen de las exportaciones en el contexto B2B y se definen qué aspectos del marketing de la sostenibilidad tienen mayor importancia por parte de las empresas agroexportadoras. Los resultados de la tesis indican que la presencia de contenidos de sostenibilidad en el sitio web de las empresas exportadoras de alimentos, así como el número de páginas visitadas, incide positivamente en el volumen de exportaciones de alimentos, con un r-cuadrado >71%. También se identificó que el Índice Total de Reputación Online -TOR construido para este tipo de compañías podría tener una importante capacidad explicativa respecto a las exportaciones de las empresas con un r-cuadrado >51%. Estos hallazgos lograron ser publicados en journals Internacionales como parte del desarrollo de la tesis de doctorado y tuvieron la oportunidad de ser presentados en congresos internacionales de prestigio.

This work is supported by projects AGL2014-52028-R and AGL2017-82447-R funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER). YPP is the recipient of a grant (PEJ15/BIO/AI-01S8) funded by Comunidad de Madrid and European Commission through ERDF/FEDER., Microspores are reprogrammed towards embryogenesis by stress. Many microspores die after this stress, limiting the efficiency of microspore embryogenesis. Autophagy is a degradation pathway that plays critical roles in stress response and cell death. In animals, cathepsins have an integral role in autophagy by degrading autophagic material; less is known in plants. Plant cathepsins are papain-like C1A cysteine proteases involved in many physiological processes, including programmed cell death. We have analysed the involvement of autophagy in cell death, in relation to cathepsin activation, during stress-induced microspore embryogenesis in Hordeum vulgare. After stress, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cell death increased and autophagy was activated, including HvATG5 and HvATG6 up-regulation and increase of ATG5, ATG8, and autophagosomes. Concomitantly, cathepsin L/F-, B-, and H-like activities were induced, cathepsin-like genes HvPap-1 and HvPap-6 were up-regulated, and HvPap-1, HvPap-6, and HvPap-19 proteins increased and localized in the cytoplasm, resembling autophagy structures. Inhibitors of autophagy and cysteine proteases reduced cell death and promoted embryogenesis. The findings reveal a role for autophagy in stress-induced cell death during microspore embryogenesis, and the participation of cathepsins. Similar patterns of activation, expression, and localization suggest a possible connection between cathepsins and autophagy. The results open up new possibilities to enhance microspore embryogenesis efficiency with autophagy and/or cysteine protease modulators., Depto. de Genética, Fisiología y Microbiología, Fac. de Ciencias Biológicas, TRUE, pub

Authors’ contributions IC, CMGB, JIR, SG, JMR, SD, and AM conceived and designed the study. NM, LR, IGD, JS, and ABC conducted the laboratory work. NM, AC, CMGB, and JIR collected and processed the biological samples. ABC developed the DNA extraction protocol. CM, MM, and MV performed the library preparation for NGS and the DNA sequencing. NM, CM, BS, MM, and MV analyzed the 16S data and the metagenomic data. JS, LR, JMR, and IC analyzed the NMR data. CMGB and JIR recruited the subjects. NM, MV, IC, SD, and AM prepared the figures and tables and wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript., Background: The microbial populations of the human intestinal tract and their relationship to specific diseases have been extensively studied during the last decade. However, the characterization of the human bile microbiota as a whole has been hampered by difficulties in accessing biological samples and the lack of adequate methodologies to assess molecular studies. Although a few reports have described the biliary microbiota in some hepatobiliary diseases, the bile microbiota of healthy individuals has not been described. With this in mind, the goal of the present study was to generate fundamental knowledge on the composition and activity of the human bile microbiota, as well as establishing its potential relationship with human bile-related disorders. Results: Human bile samples from the gallbladder of individuals from a control group, without any record of hepatobiliary disorder, were obtained from liver donors during liver transplantation surgery. A bile DNA extraction method was optimized together with a quantitative PCR (qPCR) assay for determining the bacterial load. This allows the selection of samples to perform functional metagenomic analysis. Bile samples from the gallbladder of individuals suffering from lithiasis were collected during gallbladder resection and the microbial profiles assessed, using a 16S rRNA gene-based sequencing analysis, and compared with those of the control group. Additionally, the metabolic profile of the samples was analyzed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). We detected, for the first time, bacterial communities in gallbladder samples of individuals without any hepatobiliary pathology. In the biliary microecosystem, the main bacterial phyla were represented by Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Proteobacteria. Significant differences in the relative abundance of different taxa of both groups were found. Sequences belonging to the family Propionibacteriaceae were more abundant in bile samples from control subjects, Ministerio de Economía, Comercio y Empresa, Sección Deptal. de Farmacia Galénica y Tecnología Alimentaria (Veterinaria), Fac. de Veterinaria, TRUE, pub

trial showing the beneficial effect of the strain Ligilactobacillus salivarius CECT 30632 (previously known as L. salivarius MP101) on the functional and nutritional status, and on the nasal and fecal inflammatory profiles of elderly residing in a nursing home highly affected by the pandemic. The objective of this post-hoc analysis was to elucidate if there were changes in the nasal and fecal bacteriomes of a subset of these patients as a result of the administration of the strain for 4 months and, also, its impact on their fecal fatty acids profiles. Culture-based methods showed that, while L. salivarius (species level) could not be detected in any of the fecal samples at day 0, L. salivarius CECT 30632 (strain level) was present in all the recruited people at day 120. Paradoxically, the increase in the L. salivarius counts was not reflected in changes in the metataxonomic analysis of the nasal and fecal samples or in changes in the fatty acid profiles in the fecal samples of the recruited people. Overall, our results indicate that L. salivarius CECT 30632 colonized, at least temporarily, the intestinal tract of the recruited elderly and may have contributed to improvements in their functional, nutritional, and immunological status, without changing the general structure of their nasal and fecal bacteriomes when assessed at the genus level. They also suggest the ability of low abundance bacteria to train immunity., Sección Dptal. de Nutrición y Ciencia de los Alimentos (Veterinaria), Fac. de Veterinaria, TRUE, pub