Proyectos

El objetivo general de este proyecto es caracterizar la composición química y el poder antioxidante del AE-O y evaluar su efecto sobre la alteración inducida por AP en la vía PI3K/Akt en adipocitos humanos SW872. Para ello, los objetivos específicos de esta propuesta son: i) caracterizar la composición fitoquímica y el poder antioxidante del AE-O, ii) evaluar la citotoxicidad in vitro del AE-O sobre adipocitos SW872, y iii) evaluar el efecto in vitro del AE-O sobre la alteración de la vía de señalización de la insulina PI3K/Akt inducida por AP en adipocitos SW872. Para realizar estos objetivos, primero se obtendrá el AE-O a través de destilación por vapor, y a continuación se determinará la concentración total de polifenoles mediante el método Folin-Ciocalteu y su capacidad antioxidante analizada mediante el ensayo de DPPH, para luego estandarizar el aceite según su composición fitoquímica evaluado por técnicas cromatográficas. Para estudiar la citotoxicidad in vitro del aceite, se evaluará la viabilidad celular en adipocitos SW872 diferenciados in vitro tratados con distintas concentraciones del aceite. Para estudiar el efecto protector in vitro del AE-O contra la alteración en la señalización metabólica de la insulina inducida por AP, se evaluará la activación de la vía PI3K/Akt por Western blot y la captación de glucosa (análogo fluorescente) inducida por insulina en adipocitos SW872 incubados o no con el AE-O.

Identificación de bacterias de ralves de la región de O'Higgins para el estudio de posibles funciones biotecnológicas.

Identificación de bacterias de ralves de la región de O'Higgins para el estudio de posibles funciones biotecnológicas.

The environment can be described as indispensable as it houses all life on earth, and evidence suggests that activities in interaction with nature not only provide physical and psychological benefits but also socially and economically. Nonetheless, we are currently confronted with many environmental challenges, including climate change, loss of biodiversity and degradation of natural habitats, which have adverse health outcomes for animals, humans and our shared environment. Furthermore, regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, additional threats have emerged such as an increase in the use and disposal of plastic products for medical and non-medical applications and the amount of packaging used to deliver food and groceries to residences, leading to significant challenges in handling solid and hazardous medical wastes. This could become a crucial concern in the medium or long term, whilst aggravating the already existing issues, especially in countries with inadequate waste management systems. Recognizing this, environmental education has become more relevant than ever in ensuring a sustainable future by promoting responsible decision-making at the individual, institutional and community levels. The strengthening of environmental literacy through formal and informal educational strategies at different stages of the life course, considering day-to-day situations, will eventually allow for the development of capacities in the population, thereby conserving our shared environment. Project aim: The project's main objective, therefore, is to empower the community for environmental care through educational strategies based on local needs in Guatemala and Bolivia. This is to be achieved using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach by forming a multidisciplinary and intersectoral working group that includes professionals from the academy and representatives from diverse sectors like education, work, transportation, legislators and civil society. The project also follows a spiral approach, focusing on a problem and continuing with planning, action, observation and critical reflection, giving rise to a new progressive cycle. To better disseminate the project and population adherence, a digital platform app is to be designed to make available all the education material and specific guides that support this process. Ultimately, creating awareness and educating, based on evidence, about our actions' impact will allow a better co-existence and promote sustainable development, sustainable use and care of natural resources when considering practices in rural and urban communities

El presente estudio tiene como propósito realizar un levantamiento de datos actualizado sobre el estado de la Educación Artística en el sistema educativo formal, escuelas municipales, y espacios no formales de la Región del Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins. La muestra final se compone de 104 escuelas municipales de la región de O’Higgins representativas de las tres provincias. A su vez, la muestra incluye a profesores/as (80), artistas-educadores de Talleres Mineduc, talleristas Cecrea y Acciona).

Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) play a substantial role in the ecology, economy, and culture of many communities, especially in South America. They act as the main pollinators for many native florae and cultivated tropical plants. Their products such as honey, pollen, propolis and cerumen have also been used as a source of income for generations while creating an imprint on the culture of native communities. Nevertheless, in recent decades, stingless bees currently face several environmental threats including the extensive deforestation of native forests, accelerated expansion of urban areas, excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers, agriculture intensification and the introduction/spread of exotic competing bee species. In this context, meliponiculture – i.e., keeping stingless bees for their products – is becoming more important for research not only as an optimal strategy for the conservation of bees and their environment but also for their economic value. In general, meliponiculture also promotes a variety of good environmental practices from different viewpoints in the society, maintains the traditional knowledge of native beekeeping and generates a link with innovation and scientific development. In Bolivia, meliponiculture remains an incipient activity although many indigenous communities have an ancient relationship with stingless bees. In Guatemala, the Maya tribe have also practiced meliponiculture for many years. Nevertheless, traditional knowledge is getting lost over time which must be recovered and supported by new techniques to generate a successful practice of beekeeping. Project aim: Considering this, the project, therefore, aims to optimize the sustainable development of meliponiculture. This is to be achieved by documenting its traditional use in health while promoting good practices and commercialization to have a positive, direct impact over ecosystems as well as human health in cultural landscapes in indigenous communities in Bolivia and Guatemala. For this, an interdisciplinary methodology is to be designed, which consists of a research component and educational interventions at the various processes of the production chain of meliponiculture: from the producers to consumers. Ultimately, the SBEES project is relevant, taking into account the One Health vision, as it seeks to promote a sustainable interaction between stingless bees, humans and the environment.

El presente proyecto pretende continuar y ampliar este ejercicio de desarrollo de habilidades de investigación a partir de la participación en el proyecto de investigación. Específicamente, se buscará replicar el ejercicio, pero esta vez en el marco de un proceso de evaluación del mismo. A su vez, se pretende extender el ejercicio para considerar también a estudiantes de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales e Historia. De esta forma, el proyecto busca explorar la relevancia de esta experiencia, durante su desarrollo en el año académico 2021, como una estrategia de enseñanza-aprendizaje relevante en el proceso formativo.

La Piscirickettsiosis es una grave enfermedad bacteriana que resulta en altos niveles de mortalidad en diferentes especies de salmónidos. Las pérdidas totales, incluidos los costos de vacunación y los tratamientos antimicrobianos se han estimado en alrededor de $ 450 millones de dólares por año. Desafortunadamente, las vacunas contra este patógeno han mostrado ser poco efectivas para prevenir esta enfermedad, lo que se ha asociado según estudios de nuestro laboratorio a fenómenos de coinfección de Caligus, variabilidad del patógeno y del hospedero. Recientes estudios muestran, además, que los mecanismos de respuesta inmune innata son los responsables de otorgar protección a los peces frente a un desafío con esta bacteria. De esta manera, la falta de tratamientos eficaces contra Piscirickettsia salmonis fundamentan la necesidad de buscar nuevas alternativas de tratamientos profilácticos, las que deberían estar orientados a reforzar el sistema inmune innato del hospedador. En base a estas necesidades nosotros proponemos evaluar cuerpos de inclusión como inmunoestimulantes de administración oral para el control de P. salmonis en salmón del Atlántico (Salmo salar). Los cuerpos de inclusión son agregados de proteínas recombinantes nanoestructuradas funcionales expresados usualmente en el citoplasma de bacterias recombinantes. Los cuerpos de inclusión pueden expresar cualquier proteína con una función de interés, la cual es liberada gradualmente en el tiempo. Además, son muy estables y resisten duras condiciones fisicoquímicas manteniendo su funcionalidad por lo que no es necesario su encapsulación. Debido a que la producción de los cuerpos de inclusión es altamente escalable en biorreactores bacterianos surgen entonces como una herramienta de biotecnología susceptible de llegar a ser una solución comercial. Recientemente he evaluado con éxito el uso de cuerpos de inclusión de citoquinas como inmunoestimulantes en trucha arcoíris (Onchorhynchuss mykiss) y el pez cebra (Danio rerio). La prueba de concepto de esta tecnología mostró que los cuerpos de inclusión pueden estimular una respuesta inmune en macrófagos de trucha arcoíris. Además, los cuerpos de inclusión administrados por vía intraperitoneal protegen al pez cebra frente a una infección bacteriana letal y al ser administrados oralmente son absorbidos por células presentes en la mucosa intestinal. Postulamos como hipótesis que los cuerpos de inclusión administrados por vía oral otorgan protección al salmón del atlántico contra P. salmonis. Como primer objetivo de este estudio proponemos realizar la producción y caracterización de los cuerpos de inclusión de dos proteínas relacionadas al sistema inmune innato de salmón del Atlántico. En el segundo objetivo, evaluaremos la capacidad de inmunomodulación del sistema inmune por parte de los cuerpos de inclusión al ser administrados en diferentes dosis a través de la intubación de los peces. Para ello usaremos RT-qPCR donde analizaremos la capacidad moduladora de los cuerpos de inclusión a través de la expresión génica de citoquinas proinflamatorias (TNFα, IL-1β, IFNγ), antiinflamatorias (IL-10), enzima proinflamatoria (COX-2), y receptor tipo Toll (TLR9). También analizaremos TNFα e IL-10 a través de ELISA. Igualmente, se analizará si los cuerpos de inclusión marcados con un fluoróforo son endocitados por células intestinales y si son trasladados al bazo a través de citometría de flujo. En el tercer objetivo, analizaremos la eficacia de los cuerpos de inclusión para el control de P. salmonis en salmón del Atlántico administrados a través del alimento en un desafío experimental. Se evaluará a través de técnicas moleculares (RT-qPCR y ELISA) citoquinas proinflamatorias, antiinflamatorias, enzima proinflamatoria, y receptor tipo Toll para analizar la capacidad inmunomoduladora de los cuerpos de inclusión durante un desafío bacteriano. Asimismo, evaluaremos sobrevivencia, carga de P. salmonis y necropsia de los tejidos. Nosotros esperamos como resultado de esta investigación que los cuerpos de inclusión aumenten la sobrevivencia de salmón del Atlántico frente a un desafío de P. salmonis. El desarrollo de un método profiláctico efectivo contra P. salmonis permitirá disminuir las pérdidas económicas asociadas a la Piscirickettsiosis y disminuir el uso excesivo de antibióticos en la industria de cultivo de salmones en Chile.

Stochasticity in optimization and game theory is a very important aspect to model more accurately real-world problems in many different areas (see for instance [6]). In optimization problems as well as in one-level games, namely, Nash equilibrium problems, stochasticity aspects have received quite a lot of attention for a while and have also been well studied [22]. However, for the branch of bilevel games quite few studies have included in their analysis stochastic aspects in their models. A bilevel game is basically to split a finite set of players into two levels: the leaders or upper-level players, and the followers or lower-level players. In the model, the followers react in a passive way to the leaders' actions, while the leaders compete in the upper level trying to actively anticipate the followers' reaction. Moreover, in each level, the interaction is non-cooperative as in Nash equilibrium problems. Bilevel games have been recognized as one of the most complex and at the same time very useful models in the literature [17]. Bilevel games, and more precisely the problem of the leaders in a bilevel game, face an ambiguity/uncertainty whenever the followers' reaction is not necessarily uniquely determined for each leaders' decision. To deal with this ambiguity two main approaches are well-known the optimistic and the pessimistic. The weakness of these two approaches is that both are quite extreme and the optimistic one lacks of real modeling foundations, putting the leaders in a quite naive position. Recently, in [9] a general stochastic approach has been proposed to solve this ambiguity, which is seen as an uncertainty of the problem, providing also a specific approach that seems to be more reasonable than the optimistic one, from a modeling point of view. The stochasticity in the stochastic approach is an endogenous one since it corresponds to a decision-dependent uncertainty [1, 23]. But, of course, stochasticity might also come from an exogenous side, that is, when some of the parameters defining the game, such as future demand and prices, 1 forecasts of winds and clouds, are uncertain and possibly follow some probability distribution. This has been considered in [34, 12, 13, 16]. In the second part of the project, which is the applied part, we are interested in using the developed theoretical framework of bilevel games with stochastic aspects to a problem of contaminated water resource management, which has high levels of stochasticity. The scarcity of water resource and its efficient use has been recognized as an extremely important problem in Chile and the whole world, for agricultural, industrial, and human use. Moreover, after any use, there is an outflow of water which has generally more contaminants than the inflow. Depending on the type and quantity of contaminants the outflow of water could be reused, but sometimes giving less profit to the entity. The general situation is full of uncertainties, since the entities do not share their information. Moreover, the main source of information for us will be measurements on the quality of water at different strategic points and punctual events of contamination registered by inspection, which is simply a qualitative data. Therefore, we propose first to apply predictive models and machine learning to do inverse engineering in order to understand the game played by the different actors. Then we want to study the underlying one-level game and study the design of mechanisms (bilevel game) so that we can move the equilibrium to a desired goal. In a somehow similar spirit, in [30, 31, 10] game theory techniques have been used to analyze the behavior of companies sharing contaminated water in the context of eco-industrial parks, while in [36] also a bilevel model is used for a water resource optimal allocation problem.