Publications

Chia seeds have gained significant attention due to their unique composition and potential health benefits, including high dietary fibers, omega-3 fatty acids, proteins, and phenolic compounds. These components contribute to their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory effects, as well as their ability to improve glucose metabolism and dyslipidemia. Germination is recognized as a promising strategy to enhance the nutritional value and bioavailability of chia seeds. Chia seed sprouts have been found to exhibit increased essential amino acid content, elevated levels of dietary fiber and total phenols, and enhanced antioxidant capability. However, there is limited information available concerning the dynamic changes of bioactive compounds during the germination process and the key factors influencing these alterations in biosynthetic pathways. Additionally, the influence of various processing conditions, such as temperature, light exposure, and duration, on the nutritional value of chia seed sprouts requires further investigation. This review aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the nutritional profile of chia seeds and the dynamic changes that occur during germination. Furthermore, the potential for tailored germination practices to produce chia sprouts with personalized nutrition, targeting specific health needs, is also discussed.

Abstract Colloidal metal‐halide perovskite nanocrystals (MHP NCs) are gaining significant attention for a wide range of optoelectronics applications owing to their exciting properties, such as defect tolerance, near‐unity photoluminescence quantum yield, and tunable emission across the entire visible wavelength range. Although the optical properties of MHP NCs are easily tunable through their halide composition, they suffer from light‐induced halide phase segregation that limits their use in devices. However, MHPs can be synthesized in the form of colloidal nanoplatelets (NPls) with monolayer (ML)‐level thickness control, exhibiting strong quantum confinement effects, and thus enabling tunable emission across the entire visible wavelength range by controlling the thickness of bromide or iodide‐based lead‐halide perovskite NPls. In addition, the NPls exhibit narrow emission peaks, have high exciton binding energies, and a higher fraction of radiative recombination compared to their bulk counterparts, making them ideal candidates for applications in light‐emitting diodes (LEDs). This review discusses the state‐of‐the‐art in colloidal MHP NPls: synthetic routes, thickness‐controlled synthesis of both organic–inorganic hybrid and all‐inorganic MHP NPls, their linear and nonlinear optical properties (including charge‐carrier dynamics), and their performance in LEDs. Furthermore, the challenges associated with their thickness‐controlled synthesis, environmental and thermal stability, and their application in making efficient LEDs are discussed.

Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is a naturally occurring compound that arises because of the thermal processing and storage of honey. The Codex Alimentarius Commission has established a threshold of 40 ppm as the upper limit for the HMF content in honey. This research aimed to investigate the impacts of varying heating temperatures (55, 65, and 75 °C) and heating times (10, 20, and 30 min), as well as storage temperatures (25 and 40 °C), over a period of three months. The study employed the response surface methodology (RSM) to evaluate the outcomes. The impacts of the variables mentioned above on the physicochemical properties, including the Lab color factors, pH, and moisture, were determined. Additionally, the concentration of HMF in the samples was analyzed. The prediction model of each treatment was computed. Analyses of the results obtained after the storage periods of 45 and 90 days were conducted. The findings indicated that pH, moisture content, and color were not significantly influenced by temperature, the duration of heat treatment, or the storage time. However, storage temperature considerably impacted both L* and a*. Furthermore, it was observed that all the variables significantly influenced the HMF content, and its concentration increased with the escalation of thermal processing and storage duration. Within the examined samples, the HMF content surpassed the standard limit in the model subjected to heating at 75 °C for 20 min and maintained at 40 °C for 90 days. In contrast, heating at 55 °C for 10 min, followed by storage at 25 °C for 45 days, produced the optimal HMF level.

Objective: Several features of ambulatory (ABPM) blood pressure (BP) have been explored as potential predictors of stroke. Some studies, limited among other factors by relying on a single, low reproducible 24 h ABPM per participant, use of arbitrarily fixed clock hours to defined awake and asleep spans, and/or analysis of the prognostic value of a single unadjusted ABPM-derived parameter, have concluded that elevated morning BP surge or increased BP variability might be significant markers of stroke. We evaluated the comparative prognostic value for stroke of clinic BP and multiple ABPM-derived characteristics among the participants in the Hygia Project, designed to evaluate prospectively CVD risk by ABPM in primary care centers of Northwest Spain. Design and method: This study involved 11255 subjects, 6028 men/5227 women, 58.9 ± 14.5 years of age, with baseline BP ranging from normotension to hypertension according to ABPM criteria, prospectively evaluated throughout a 4.0-year median follow-up. BP was measured at 20-min intervals from 07:00 to 23:00 h and every 30-min at night for 48 h. During monitoring, subjects maintained a diary listing the times of going to bed and awakening. Results: We documented 147 ischemic and 29 hemorrhagic strokes. When each ABPM-derived parameter was analyzed separately, the asleep systolic BP mean was the most significant predictor of stroke (adjusted hazard ratio 1.35; 95%CI [1.20–1.52] for each 1-SD increase; P < 0.001). A greater morning BP surge was significantly associated with lower, not higher, stroke risk (0.87 [0.76–0.99], P = 0.042). After adjustment by asleep BP, neither clinic BP nor any other ABPM-derived parameter, including awake and 48 h means, sleep-time relative BP decline, morning surge, and indices of awake, asleep and 24 h BP variability, was significantly associated with increased/decreased risk of stroke. Conclusions: Progressively elevated sleep-time systolic BP was the only significant and independent prognostic marker of stroke. Contrary to current believe, neither a greater morning BP surge, morning hypertension, or extreme-dipper BP patterning increased the risk of stroke after adjusting by asleep BP level. On the basis of the null prognostic value of clinic BP here corroborated, ABPM should be considered a clinical requirement for proper stroke risk stratification.

<strong>Abstract</strong> Advances in phylogenetic methods and high-throughput sequencing have allowed the reconstruction of deep phylogenetic relationships in the evolutionary history of eukaryotes. Yet, the root of the eukaryotic tree of life remains elusive. The most ‘popular’ (i.e. in textbooks and reviews) hypothesis for the root is between Unikonta (Opisthokonta + Amoebozoa) and Bikonta (all other eukaryotes), which emerged from analyses of a single gene fusion and a limited sampling of eukaryotic lineages. Subsequent highly-cited studies based on concatenation of genes supported this hypothesis with some variations or proposed a root within the Excavata. However, concatenation of genes neither considers phylogenetically-informative events (i.e. gene duplications and losses), nor provides an estimate of the root. A more recent study using gene tree-species tree reconciliation methods suggested the root lies between Opisthokonta and all other eukaryotes, but only including 59 taxa and 20 genes. Here we apply a gene tree – species tree reconciliation approach to a gene-rich and taxon-rich dataset (i.e. 2,786 gene families from two sets of ~158 diverse eukaryotic lineages) to assess the root, and we iterate each analysis 100 times to quantify tree space uncertainty. Our results estimate a root between Fungi and all other eukaryotes, or between Opisthokonta and all other eukaryotes, and reject alternative popular roots from the literature. Based on further analysis of genome size we propose Opisthokonta + others as the most likely root. Finding the root of the eukaryotic tree of life is critical for the field of comparative biology as it allows us to understand the timing and mode of evolution of characters across the evolutionary history of eukaryotes. Methods<br> Here we provide the alignments, gene trees, inputs, and outputs from our project entitled "Phylogenomic Analyses of 2,786 Genes in 158 Lineages Support a Root of The Eukaryotic Tree of Life Between Opisthokonts and All Other Lineages". Sequences and alignments were produced using the phylogenomic pipeline PhyloToL, which contains a taxon- and gene-rich database (including eukaryotes, archaea, and bacteria). These data were then used for 1) assessing the root of the eukaryotes and 2) for comparison with other previously published hypotheses. In both cases, we used the species tree - gene tree reconciliation tool iGTP. We also did a comparison of hypotheses using the likelihood-based tool SpeciesRax <strong>iGTP</strong> Input data These data are divided into four datasets based on taxa selection. For dataset SEL+, taxa were selected based on their taxonomy; for RAN+, taxa were selected randomly among the major eukaryotic clades Opisthokonta, Amoebozoa, Archaeplastida, Excavata, SAR, and some orphan lineages. Datasets SEL- and RAN- are the same as SEL+ and RAN+, but exclude microsporidians in order to account for and avoid long branch attraction due to microsporidians fast-evolutionary rates. We chose the gene families that contain at least 25 taxa representing at least four of the five major eukaryotic clades. Additionally, at least 2 of the major clades had to contain at least 2 minor clades (e.g. Glaucophytes and Rhodophyta are minor clades in the major clade Archaeplastida). In a pilot analysis, we produced an alignment and a phylogenetic tree for each gene family using the default settings of a previous version of PhyloToL (GUIDANCE V1.3.1 sequence cutoff = 0.3 and column cutoff = 0.4; RAxML quick tree with model PROTGAMMALG and no bootstraps). Then, we kept the gene families that are exclusive of eukaryotes or the ones in which eukaryotes were monophyletic. From a total of 3,002 gene families that met our criteria, 2786 passed the initial steps of PhyloToL when including only the data from the dataset SEL+. These 2,786 gene families were used for further analyses with all datasets. MSAs were produced with PhyloToL (GUIDANCE V2.02 sequence cutoff = 0.3, column cutoff = 0.4, number of iterations = 5; Sela, et al. 2015). The default parameters of PhyloToL include up to five iterations of GUIDANCE V2.02 with 10 bootstraps and MAFFT V7 with algorithm E-INS-i for less than 200 sequences or “auto” option if more than 200 sequences, and maxiterate = 1000. Instead, here we run up to five iterations of GUIDANCE with 20 bootstraps and the simple MAFFT algorithm FFT-NS-2. Then, we perform an additional GUIDANCE run with 100 bootstraps and the default MAFFT parameters for PhyloToL. Gene trees were inferred with RAxML v.8.2.4 with 10 ML searches for best-ML tree (option "-# 10"), using the rapid hill-climbing algorithm (option "-f d") and no bootstrap replicates. The protein evolution model used was evaluated during the gene tree inference (option "-m PROTCATAUTO") by testing all models available in RAxML (e.g. JTT, LG, WAG, etc) with optimization of substitution rates and of site-specific evolutionary rates which were categorized into four distinct rate categories for greater computational efficiency. We ran 100 repetitions of iGTP analyses per dataset. But, given the complexity of the datasets and the heuristic nature of some key steps of the iGTP algorithm (e.g. gene tree rooting and initial starting species tree generation), in a preliminary analysis, we faced two systematic challenges with iGTP as the inferred species tree was affected by: 1) the order of the leaves in the input unrooted gene tree Newick strings (i.e. the input trees were treated as rooted even though we specified that they were not); and 2) the input gene order in the 100 replicates. Therefore, we randomly shuffled the order of the leaves in the unrooted gene trees (keeping the same topology), and randomly shuffled the order of the input gene trees in each of the 100 replicates per dataset. Here we provide the 100 input files generated for those iGTP analyses. Output data Here we also share the data generated after two analyses: 1) root assessment and 2) hypothesis testing. For the former, we allowed iGTP to calculate the more parsimonious root given our input files. For the latter, we allowed iGTP to calculate the reconciliation cost of the gene trees given the input files and constraints in the species trees to reflect previously published root hypotheses. The constraints are explained in the README file. SpeciesRax Since we removed LGT and contamination from our dataset using a series of filters, we applied the model UndatedDL instead of UndatedDTL, which implies that we only took into consideration duplications and losses and ignored the transferences. Then, the command used for SpeciesRax was... ./generax --families forGeneRax/famFile --species-tree forGeneRax/spsTreeAn.newick --strategy SKIP --rec-model UndatedDL --per-family-rates --prefix An_DS1 --si-strategy EVAL input Here, we are sharing all the necessary files to run SpeciesRax, including the mapping file (famFile), the species trees (spsTrees; the best iGTP constrained species trees per hypothesis), and their underlying gene trees (trees_r) output Output folder from SpeciesRax, which includes log files, events (duplications, losses) counts, and statistics (i.e., reconciliation likelihood values) Note: <br> * As in the iGTP analyses, for the SpeciesRax files, the words Op, Fu, Di, Un, An, refer to the five root hypotheses compared: Opisthokonta-others, Fungi-others, Discoba-others, Unikonta-Bikonta, and (Ancyromonadida + Metamonada)-others, respectively. <br> * For the SpeciesRax analyses, the Un word refers to Ut (Cavalier-Smith 2003) <br>

Moringa oleifera Lam. (M. oleifera) is a fast-growing and esculent plant with high nutritional and medicinal values. Traditionally, M. oleifera has been applied to treat anaemia, asthma, pain in joints, headaches, diarrhoea and so forth. Phytochemical studies have manifested that more than 300 components, including flavonoids, phenolic acids, organic acids, alkaloids, lignans, glucosinolates, carotenoids, proteins, fats, minerals, and so on, are present in different parts of M. oleifera. Simultaneously, M. oleifera has exhibited extensive notable pharmacological activities, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti-cancer, hypoglycemic, hypolipidemic, hypotensive, hepatoprotective, etc. Consequently, on the one hand, this work aims to comprehensively and holistically review the nutritional components, chemical constituents and pharmacological activities on various parts of M. oleifera, as well as its applications in functional food products and medicines. On the other hand, this work also looks forward to the new prospects and the future developments in the research of M. oleifera, and thus provides valuable insights for the follow-up and in-depth studies of this multifunctional tree.