Scientists at the Institut de Ciències del Mar of the CSIC have demonstrated that some stimulations of the immune system during the early stages of fish development can trigger epigenetic modifications that lead to changes in the sexual phenotype. This could have important implications for aquaculture production in those species where the female has the greatest growth, since the more females there are, the higher the production.

We speak with Frederic Bartumeus, researcher at CEAB-CSIC and CREAF, who is co-leading a project to study the expansion of Covid-19 by geolocation with Javier Ramasco, from the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (CSIC and the Universidad de las Islas Baleares). The team studies the mobility of the population during confinement to obtain data on the risk of transmission.

We talk with Pilar Marco, leader of the Nanobiotechnology for Diagnostics Group at the Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia, about the project POC4COVID.

The CSIC launches a genetic study to identify the individual risk of developing severe forms of Covid-19. We converse about the project with Anna Planas, a CSIC researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona (IIBB-CSIC).

In the Clean Room of the Barcelona Microelectronics Institute (IMB-CNM-CSIC) scientists are developing devices for COVID-1 diagnostic sensors. This work is part of two projects: Convat , led by ICN2, and POC4CoV, co-led by the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC) and the IMB-CNM, CSIC.

The Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC) of the CSIC leads a project aimed at developing a tool for the diagnosis and monitoring of cystinosis, a rare disease. The tool could reduce the time that patients, especially children, have to spend at the hospital. The project has received a grant from the AGAUR agency and from the European ERDF funds.

Scientists at the ICMAB-CSIC have published the firsts results of this innovative ophthalmological treatment in the Biomaterials Science magazine. Bacterial nanocellulose is more affordable and easy to preserve than current treatments, and it will be impregnated with growth factors to accelerate corneal regeneration. The research is developed in close collaboration with the Barraquer Ophthalmology Centre in Barcelona, which supports this project from a clinical perspective.

A new peptide-based radiotracer has been designed to identify LDL-cholesterol retained and accumulated on the vascular wall of arteries, which can be seen in the very early stages of the disease. The CSIC and the Hospital de Sant Pau are leading this project, which recently was selected in the latest call for grants from the BBVA Foundation for Scientific Research Teams in Biomedicine.