Economic development, transport investment, and urbanization in Mexico: causality and effects

Vicente German-Soto Alexsandra De la Peña Flores Karina García (2023)

The transport investment is often used as a tool for economic development and urbanization. However, there is still debate about whether transport improvements promote development and urbanization or, conversely, these latter create the conditions that stimulate the transport. In theory, the transport system contributes to development and urbanization because it speeds up the exchange of goods and services, but the effects can also be reversed, so the direction of causality is not so easily identified. This work uses Mexican state information of the 1988-2018 period, grouped as panel, to know both magnitude and direction of the impacts. Methodology consists in cointegration tests and VECM regressions. The results reveal that long-term causality goes from economic development to transport and its subsectors, which means that economic development is a necessary condition to modernize transport in Mexico. For urbanization, the causality and magnitude of the effects vary depending on the transport subsector. The total economy and passenger sector’s investments cause urbanization, but transportation and subsectors of cargo carriers and communications estimate two-way causality. The conclusions suggest that urbanization depends on improvements in transportation and the latter, in turn, on economic development.

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Desarrollo regional Transporte Economía urbana Causalidad Modelo VECM CIENCIAS SOCIALES CIENCIAS SOCIALES Economic development, Granger-Causality, VECM Models, Productivity, Urban Economics

The search for cryptic L-Rhamnosyltransferases on the Sporothrix schenckii genome

Hector M. Mora-Montes Karina García-Gutiérrez Laura Cristina García Carnero Nancy Lozoya-Perez Jorge Humberto Ramírez Prado (2022)

The fungal cell wall is an attractive structure to look for new antifungal drug targets and for understanding the host-fungus interaction. Sporothrix schenckii is one of the main causative agents of both human and animal sporotrichosis and currently is the species most studied of the Sporothrix genus. The cell wall of this organism has been previously analyzed, and rhamnoconjugates are signature molecules found on the surface of both mycelia and yeast-like cells. Similar to other reactions where sugars are covalently linked to other sugars, lipids, or proteins, the rhamnosylation process in this organism is expected to involve glycosyltransferases with the ability to transfer rhamnose from a sugar donor to the acceptor molecule, i.e., rhamnosyltransferases. However, no obvious rhamnosyltransferase has thus far been identified within the S. schenckii proteome or genome. Here, using a Hidden Markov Model profile strategy, we found within the S. schenckii genome five putative genes encoding for rhamnosyltransferases. Expression analyses indicated that only two of them, named RHT1 and RHT2, were significantly expressed in yeast-like cells and during interaction with the host. These two genes were heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli, and the purified recombinant proteins showed rhamnosyltransferase activity, dependent on the presence of UDP-rhamnose as a sugar donor. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report about rhamnosyltransferases in S. schenckii. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

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FUNGAL CELL-WALL GLYCANS RHAMNOCONJUGATES RHAMNOSYLTRANSFERASE BIOLOGÍA Y QUÍMICA CIENCIAS DE LA VIDA BIOLOGÍA VEGETAL (BOTÁNICA) ECOLOGÍA VEGETAL ECOLOGÍA VEGETAL

miRNAs contained in extracellular vesicles cargo contribute to the progression of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: an in vitro aproach

JOVITO CESAR SANTOS ALVAREZ JUAN MANUEL VELAZQUEZ ENRIQUEZ ROSENDO GARCÍA CARRILLO CESAR RODRIGUEZ BEAS ALMA AURORA RAMIREZ HERNANDEZ EDILBURGA REYES JIMENEZ KARINA GONZÁLEZ GARCÍA ARMANDO LOPEZ MARTINEZ LAURA PEREZ CAMPOS MAYORAL SERGIO ROBERTO AGUILAR RUIZ MARIA DE LOS ANGELES ROMERO TLALOLINI HONORIO TORRES AGUILAR LUIS ALBERTO CASTRO SANCHEZ JAIME ARELLANES ROBLEDO VERONICA ROCIO VASQUEZ GARZON RAFAEL BALTIERREZ HOYOS (2022)

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, progressive lung disease. Lesions in the lung epithelium cause alterations in the microenvironment that promote fibroblast accumulation. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) transport proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids, such as microRNAs (miRNAs). The aim of this study was to characterize the differentially expressed miRNAs in the cargo of EVs obtained from the LL97 and LL29 fibroblast cell lines isolated from IPF lungs versus those derived from the CCD19 fibroblast cell line isolated from a healthy donors. We characterized EVs by ultracentrifugation, Western blotting, and dynamic light scattering. We identified miRNAs by small RNA-seq, a total of 1144 miRNAs, of which

1027 were known miRNAs; interestingly, 117 miRNAs were novel. Differential expression analysis showed that 77 miRNAs were upregulated and 68 were downregulated. In addition, pathway enrichment analyses from the Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genomes identified several miRNA target genes in the categories, cell proliferation, regulation of apoptosis, pathways in cancer, and proteoglycans in cancer. Our data reveal that miRNAs contained in EVs cargo could be helpful as biomarkers for fibrogenesis, diagnosis, and therapeutic intervention of IPF.

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MEDICINA Y CIENCIAS DE LA SALUD Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis Extracellular vesicles Fibroblasts Small-RNA seq