De Montevideo Research Articles

Results of Bladder TUR Performed by a Second - Year Urology Resident at the Hospital de Clinicas de Montevideo, Uruguay: Detailed Analysis

Results of Bladder TUR Performed by a Second - Year Urology Resident at the Hospital de Clinicas de Montevideo, Uruguay: Detailed Analysis

Identification of long-preserved specimens reveals the historical geographic range of the Patagonian lamprey Geotria macrostoma (Burmeister, 1868) in southern South America.

The lamprey genus Geotria Gray, 1851 currently includes only two species: G. australis and G. macrostoma. However, taxonomic relationships within the genus have traditionally been ambiguous and difficult to establish due to the extreme changes in morphology, dentition, and coloration that lampreys undergo during their life cycles, particularly during upstream migration and sexual maturation. Consequently, several lamprey specimens held in museum collections have remained unidentified, especially those from Argentina. In this study, a series of morphometric characters were subjected to discriminant function analysis (DFA) to identify the lamprey species collected during 1867-2004 from the de la Plata River and Patagonia. These specimens are housed at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia" in Buenos Aires, the Museo de Historia Natural de Montevideo, and the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet in Stockholm. Based on the proportions of the length of the oral disc, prebranchial, and pre-caudal body regions, and the depth of the trunk, DFA provided conclusive evidence that the specimens corresponded to the recently revalidated G. macrostoma (Burmeister, 1868), which was originally incorrectly named as Petromyzon macrostomus Burmeister, 1868, Exomegas macrostomus (Berg, 1899), Geotria chilensis (Berg, 1895), and Geotria macrostoma f. gallegensis Smitt, 1901, as well as other nontype museum individuals of uncertain taxonomic status. The identifications of these long-preserved museum specimens provided key information on the historical geographic range of Argentinian lampreys and suggest that the disappearance of the species reported from northern localities (the Pampean Region) can be attributed to the degradation of their critical habitats, primarily caused by anthropogenic impact and climate change.

La escuela del barrio. Hacia una aproximación de la identidad de la hinchada del Racing Club de Sayago

The work deals with the construction of identity of Racing Club de Montevideo’s fans, exploring its main composing issues and interconnections. The narratives of the study subjects are considered, as well as other structures that underlie the collective senses and practices, especially on official match days –here conceived as a ritual– when violence is constituted as a practice that generates specific bonds and meaning. Fans make use of a repertoire of symbols and practices that intentionally communicate an image to others, who are in a position of antagonists within a particular scenario of Uruguayan football, dominated by the disproportionate allegiance to the so-called big teams compared to that of the small ones. It is concluded that the territory, the history, and the style of football are important factors in this communication which, aesthetically, symbolically and discursively, narrates the dichotomy between them and the others.

Monitoreo de calidad de agua y predicción de coliformes fecales en playas de Montevideo mediante algoritmos de aprendizaje automático

We constructed artificial intelligence (AI) models to predict faecal water quality (CF) to aid management in recreational beaches. Historical data base generated by the Laboratorio de Calidad Ambiental de la Intendencia de Montevideo (IM) was analized and AI models wwere constructed to predict CF excess (CF >2.000). Ten years of monitoring 21 recreational beaches (N=19359, november 2009 to september 2019) presented a wide range of salinity and turbidity variability among beaches. CF showed an asymetric distribution (min=4, median=250, average=1.047 and máx=1.280.000) with values exceeding the threshold in all beaches. In situ registered, meteorological and oceanographic variables were used to train AI models. A stratified random forest showed the best performance in the evaluated metrics with an overall accuracy of 86% and 60% of improvement in true positive rates with respect to baseline. High quality data generated by govermental institution together with modeling strategies provided a relevant framework to aid in beach and public health management.

First person – Magdalena Cardenas-Rodriguez

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Magdalena Cardenas-Rodriguez is first author on ‘ Genetic compensation for cilia defects in cep290 mutants by upregulation of cilia-associated small GTPases’, published in JCS. Magdalena is a research assistant in the lab of Jose Luis Badano at Human Molecular Genetics Laboratory, Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay, investigating the cellular processes that are altered in cilia-related human diseases.

Quantitative proteomic dataset from oro- and naso-pharyngeal swabs used for COVID-19 diagnosis: Detection of viral proteins and host's biological processes altered by the infection.

Since January 2020, the world is facing the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. In a big effort to cope with this outbreak, two Uruguayan institutions, Institut Pasteur de Montevideo and Universidad de la República, have developed and implemented a diagnosis pipeline based on qRT-PCR using entirely local resources. In this context, we performed comparative quantitative proteomic analysis from oro- and naso-pharyngeal swabs used for diagnosis. Tryptic peptides obtained from five positive and five negative samples were analysed by nano-LC-MS/MS using a Q-Exactive Plus mass spectrometer. Data analysis was performed using PatternLab for Proteomics software. From all SARS-CoV-2 positive swabs we were able to detect peptides of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein that encapsulates and protect the RNA genome. Additionally, we detected an average of 1100 human proteins from each sample. The most abundant proteins exclusively detected in positive swabs were “Guanylate-binding protein 1”, “Tapasin” and “HLA class II histocompatibility antigen DR beta chain”. The biological processes overrepresented in infected host cells were “SRP-dependent cotranslational protein targeting to membrane”, “nuclear-transcribed mRNA catabolic process, nonsense-mediated decay”, “viral transcription” and “translational initiation”. Data is available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD020394. We expect that this data can contribute to the future development of mass spectrometry based approaches for COVID-19 diagnosis. Also, we share this preliminary proteomic characterization concerning the host response to infection for its reuse in basic investigation.

Do Higher Salaries Yield Better Teachers and Better Student Outcomes?

José María Cabrera and Dinand Webbink⇑ José María Cabrera works at the Universidad de Montevideo in Uruguay. Dinand Webbink works at the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam. He is affiliated with Tinbergen Institute and IZA. webbink{at}ese.eur.nl

Desfase en dirección única. Notas sobre los orígenes del videoarte en Uruguay y Eslovenia

Existe en la actualidad un creciente interés en establecer correspondencias y comparaciones entre Europa del Este y América del Sur en el campo de las artes visuales, especialmente durante el período comprendido entre 1960 y 1989, aproximadamente. Hay tres factores que contribuyen a justificarlo. El primero de ellos es el vínculo directo entre ambas regiones, en parte creado por las diferentes olas de migraciones en ambas direcciones y sus procesos históricos, y en parte por el intercambio cultural vinculado o no a ellas. El segundo es la constatación y análisis de una serie de puntos en común en el campo de la creación artística a partir de la década de 1960. El tercer factor es la «contemporaneidad» (Preda, 2015, 56) de «regímenes dictatoriales» en diversos países de ambas regiones en las décadas de 1970 y 1980, un contexto en el que «estrategias para lidiar con todo tipo de medidas políticas de represión fueron cultivadas simultáneamente» (Dressler, 2010).

Advances in the Generation of Genetically Modified (GM) Animal Models: Meeting report.

The International Symposium and Course ‘‘Advances in the Generation of Genetically Modified (GM) Animal Models’’ was held in September 7–18, 2015, at the Institut Pasteur de Montevideo (IPMon), Uruguay. The meeting was organized by the Transgenic and Experimental Animal Unit of IPMon and the Instituto de Reproduccion Animal de Uruguay (IRAUy). The main objective was to update the state of the art of animal transgenic technologies for participants worldwide, focusing in spreading these technologies to emerging countries of South America and the Caribbean. Several topics in large and small animals were addressed in the 2 week period, organized in a Symposium consisted of 2 days of lectures, and the Course consisted of 1 week of lecture sessions and 1 week of practical sessions or workshops. A total of 70 people attended the meeting (i.e. Symposium and Course lecture sessions), while the practical sessions were limited to 20 participants. The meeting gathered relevant researchers and PhD students from several countries of Europe, Asia, Oceania, North and South America and the Caribbean. Participants were mainly scientists and postgraduate students, but also representatives of biotechnological companies and regulatory and funding governmental agencies of South American and Caribbean countries. The meeting was made possible thanks to the collaboration of 18 institutions and companies, receiving financial support of Pasteur Institute International Network (RIIP), United Nations University (UNU-Biolac), International Society for Transgenic Technologies (ISTT), Fondo para la Convergencia Estructural del Mercosur (FOCEM), National Agency of Research and Innovation (ANII), Uruguayan Committee for Risk Assessment (CGR), IPMon and IRAUy. Also, several private local and international companies supported the activity (Charles River, Eppendorf, Alesco, Hamilton Thorne, CosmoBio Co. Ltd, Biodiagnostico, Biriden, Biologistica, Hogner and Eleco). In addition to the balanced tuning among lectures and practical sessions, the meeting combined specialist speakers in different animal species, making the activity attractive for a wider public and at the same time educational for everybody. As genetically engineering technologies have particular interest in livestock in this region of the world, and maintain the same worldwide importance for laboratory animal models, we decided to combine these two communities in an integrative meeting. M. Crispo G. Schlapp M. N. Meikle A. P. Mulet Unidad de Animales Transgenicos y de Experimentacion (UATE), Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay e-mail: crispo@pasteur.edu.uy

The pre-Hispanic landscape of the Cerro de Montevideo (Uruguay) in the sixteenth century: first eco-historical study based on biogeography of vegetation and arachnids, historiography and other evidence

The Cerro de Montevideo is a symbolic reference of Uruguay that currently presents an artificialised landscape with environmental deterioration. We used combined techniques including documentary analysis, cartography, remote sensing, biogeographical relict biota, digital recreation and estimated valuation of visual fragility to characterise its pre-Hispanic ecological landscape: a grassy matrix with large patches and corridors of grasslands and woody vegetation, with an estimated intermediate-level visual fragility. The physiognomic changes would have initiated since ca. 1520, much earlier than was formerly proposed (1851), due to supply of firewood from native forests to vessels and livestock introduction by Europeans. Landscape artificialisation by urbanisation and industrialisation was intensified since 1870. Environmental degradation has increased since 1930. For the first time, cryptozoic arachnofauna, visual fragility and digital satellite photographic recreations were included in an historical landscape study. In addition, Dorstenia brasiliensis was found to be the first known identified plant for the Uruguayan flora.

CD68GFP/APOE-/- mouse: A novel model to study macrophage biology in atherosclerosis

CD68GFP/APOE-/- mouse: A novel model to study macrophage biology in atherosclerosis

Confirmation of Mola mola (Tetraodontiformes: Molidae) and historical records of ocean sunfishes (Mola sp.) in the coastal area of Uruguay

Mola mola is distributed from temperate to tropical oceans. The scarce reports on the occurrence of the species in the Uruguayan coast were based on incomplete morphological studies on collected specimens that could not properly discard the congeneric Mola ramsayi . This work constitutes confirmation of the occurrence of Mola mola in the coastal area of Uruguay, based on morphological characters of a specimen collected in April 2013. The fish occurred 100 m offshore in the Rio de la Plata estuary (at a depth of 5 m), in an area with a water temperature between 19 and 19.5°C. Morphometric data is provided. The specimen is preserved in the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Montevideo (Uruguay).

Crystallography and the IYCr2014 in Uruguay and Latin America

X-ray Crystallography has been present in Uruguay since the 50's. A project funded by UNESCO brought Prof. S. Furberg to Montevideo and introduced equipment in a laboratory of Universidad de la República, Facultad de Ingeniería where Prof. Stephenson Caticha Ellis worked.[1] During the period 1968-1995 the political and economic situation of the country reduced research in general and crystallography in particular, re-emerging in the late 90's with the acquisition of an automatic single-crystal diffractometer by Facultad de Química. After the opening of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory in 1997 several projects in crystallography have also developed with the successful realization of half a dozen postgraduate projects. Currently there are chemical, biological and physical crystallography labs in the country, with a reduced but sufficient pool of research equipment. The main institutions where Crystallography is developed are Universidad de la República (3 groups) and the Institut Pasteur de Montevideo. There has been an explosive growth of crystallography in the country in recent years. From the 4-people group found at F. de Química in 2000 to over 50 people of the Red Uruguaya de Cristalografía recently founded.[2] This development wouldn't have happened without the strong influence of Latin American crystallographers, mainly but not only from Argentina and Brazil, and also collaboration from extra-regional colleagues from USA, the UK, France and Switzerland. Very recently additional impulse has come from Latin America with the formation of the Latin American Cryst. Assoc. LACA[3]. Uruguayan crystallographers are currently involved in dissemination and academic projects for IYCr2014 such as an open-sky photo-gallery in Montevideo, a national crystal growth competition, a protein crystallography school and two UNESCO/IUCr OpenLab Type 1 sponsored by Bruker. A description of on-going projects in Uruguay and the region will be outlined in the presentation

Pharmacogenetics in Latin American populations: regulatory aspects, application to herbal medicine, cardiovascular and psychiatric disorders

Meeting report of the "Second Symposium on Pharmacology of Cytochrome P450 and Transporters" organized by the Cuban Society of Pharmacology in collaboration with the European Society of Pharmacogenetics and Theranostics (ESPT) and the Ibero-American Network of Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics (www.ribef.com). The Symposium covered different topics on pharmacogenetics and its clinical implications, focusing on Latin-American populations. The activities of the ESPT were also presented and discussed. The topics addressed were regulatory aspects, the use of pharmacogenetics in pre-clinical research, herbal medicine, and natural products, ending with a discussion about translation into clinical practice, specifically for cardiovascular disorders and psychiatry. Finally, the implication for population diversity in Latin America was also discussed. The RIBEF initiative represents a promising step towards the inclusion of Latin American populations among those to benefit from the implementation of pharmacogenetics in clinical practice. Among current RIBEF activities, the CEIBA.FP Consortium aims to study the variability of pheno- and genotypes in Hispanics that are relevant to pharmacogenetics. For this purpose, populations from Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Brasil, Perú, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Portugal, and Spain are currently being studied. The meeting's main conclusion was that population pharmacogenetic studies as well as academic clinical trials might need to be conducted in the different geographic locations/countries. This is important in order to improve drug safety, dosage recommendations, and pharmacovigilance programs, because environmental and ethnic factors vary across locations.

Structural and Enzymatic Insights into the ATP Binding and Autophosphorylation Mechanism of a Sensor Histidine Kinase

DesK is a sensor histidine kinase (HK) that allows Bacillus subtilis to respond to cold shock, triggering the adaptation of membrane fluidity via transcriptional control of a fatty acid desaturase. It belongs to the HK family HPK7, which includes the nitrogen metabolism regulators NarX/Q and the antibiotic sensor LiaS among other important sensor kinases. Structural information on different HK families is still scarce and several questions remain, particularly concerning the molecular features that determine HK specificity during its catalytic autophosphorylation and subsequent response-regulator phosphotransfer reactions. To analyze the ATP-binding features of HPK7 HKs and dissect their mechanism of autophosphorylation at the molecular level, we have studied DesK in complex with ATP using high resolution structural approaches in combination with biochemical studies. We report the first crystal structure of an HK in complex with its natural nucleotidic substrate. The general fold of the ATP-binding domain of DesK is conserved, compared with well studied members of other families. Yet, DesK displays a far more compact structure at the ATP-binding pocket: the ATP lid loop is much shorter with no secondary structural organization and becomes ordered upon ATP loading. Sequence conservation mapping onto the molecular surface, semi-flexible protein-protein docking simulations, and structure-based point mutagenesis allow us to propose a specific domain-domain geometry during autophosphorylation catalysis. Supporting our hypotheses, we have been able to trap an autophosphorylating intermediate state, by protein engineering at the predicted domain-domain interaction surface.

The pioneers of clinical neurology in South America

The field of neurology in South America (SA) began to emerge towards the end of the nineteenth century, following the origin of the specialty in Europe. There was a consistent and long-standing admiration for European training, which led to the birth of the discipline in South America. The first steps took place almost simultaneously with European countries in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Peru. This paper will unearth information on the pioneers of clinical neurology in SA. Taken together, these sources reveal several important milestones in the long history of the field. The department of Neurology at the Hospital San Roque de Buenos Aires was created in 1885 and headed by José María Ramos Mejía, who then took over as Professor of Neurology at the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine in 1887. The first institute of neurology in Latin America, the Instituto Neurológico de Montevideo, was founded in 1926 under Américo Ricaldoni's direction. Seventeen years later, the Arquivos de Neuropsiquiatria from San Pablo was created, and is still in existence. Up until the present, South America has made dozens of important research contributions, the most important in the diagnosis and treatment of regional endemic diseases.

Forensic anthropology in Latin America

Forensic anthropology has been one of the fastest growing medico–legal disciplines both in its contribution to the practical needs of the legal system and research accomplishments. New anthropological standards were developed to apply to a specific population of a region. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a large sample of anthropological forensic cases and to review pertinent literature that deals with anthropological standards developed for the population of the continent of Central and South America. Using Uruguay as an example, there was not a single office or anthropologist assigned to analyze human skeletal remains in Uruguay. In 1991 the Laboratorio de Antropologı́a Forense at the Morgue Judicial of Montevideo was created. A total of 189 forensic anthropological cases (276 individuals) were analyzed since this date. Twenty six percent of cases involving human remains were positively identified. The majority came from the Departamento de Montevideo, the largest population district of the country. Most of the cases fell into the 60 to 69 years old age range (35%). Females represented 32% of the total. Since the establishment of the laboratory, the number of forensic cases increased considerably from 20 in 1991 to 40 in 1997. The case studies were accompanied with skull-photo superimposition and facial reconstruction when no other evidence for positive identification was available. This service provided by the laboratory was quickly known to coroners, law enforcement agencies, and other legal authorities and thus utilized not only in Uruguay but also in several other countries in the continent. Because of the obvious need for an anthropologist, there are now university programs to provide forensic anthropological education. Yet, research has lagged behind considerably. Deficiencies are obvious in basic osteological standards of estimating age, calculating stature, determining sex and assessing race that can be applied to populations of the continent. Regional standards are also needed to estimate postmortem interval, to identify culture specific causes of trauma and other forensic phenomena. Some of these can be remedied if there is a database where the available literature is stored and osteometric information is shared.

Cuba en la conferencia de Montevideo

The Seventh Pan-American Conference in Montevideo (VII Conferencia Panamericana de Montevideo) held in December of 1933 was the first manifestation of new a political line of the Cuban government led by Grau San Martín. The Conference took place just a few months after the Revolution of 1933 which overthrew Gerardo Machado's dictatorship. The previous Pan-American conference was held in Havana and not all Latin American countries recognized the previous Cuban government. Similarly, the new Cuban government was not fully acknowledged at the time. Another important dimension of international politics lied in the complex and tense relations with the United States.

Book Reviews

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access HECTOR J. ROSSELLO.Cátedra de Cultura Médica. Facultad de Medicina de Montevideo, 1953. 254 pp. J. PI-SUNYER J. PI-SUNYER Winthrop Products, Inc.,New York, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume IX, Issue 3, July 1954, Page 385, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/IX.3.385 Published: 01 July 1954

Physiological Bases of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

The book is a collection of fifteen lectures given by the author at the Facultad de Medicina de Montevideo. The style is very readable and the contents are interesting. Much of the material represents conclusions drawn from work with experimental animals and might not be valid for human beings. While the conclusions present little of practical value to the clinician, they should stimulate interest among those doing research. The clinician will gain from this book an appreciation of the complicated mechanisms governing uterine physiology.