2023-09-14 14:59:00
The idea of a border, that There is a limit that must be crossed for the advancement of knowledge.. And in one field, the life sciences, which involve neurosciences as well as plant biology and ecology, translational medicine as well as microbiology. These are the topics he discusses for three days – until tomorrow – a meeting of Argentine and German scientists at the Cultural Center of Sciences, in the Scientific Pole of Palermo. “Frontiers in biosciences”, in its fourth edition, had yesterday afternoon as its central point the participation of a Nobel Prize winner: the Bavarian German Erwin Neher, who received the most important award in science in 1991 by research on how information passes in neurons. Neher cited a hero of local medicine, Eduardo De Robertis, in his conference. And he didn’t do it to curry favor with his audience, but because his work published in 1954 on the mechanics of information transmission between neurons was actually a milestone for further discoveries; among others, the one that led to Neher’s own Nobel Prize in Medicine, who will turn 80 in March.
Argentine-German cooperation in science is not new, but its milestone was the inauguration in 2012 of the first partner institute of the Max Planck Society in Latin America, the Biomedicine Research Institute of Buenos Aires (Ibioba). of Conicet. Ibioba is now hosting the meeting that has about 350 participants, including about 50 students with scholarships from the interior by the Fund for the Structural Convergence of Mercosur (Focem), a biomedical network that works on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer. A decade after that association, Eduardo doctorfounder of Ibioba, explains the importance of this 2023 event: “Twenty directors of Max Planck institutes came to our country and not only presented their most recent work, but also discussed the work of Argentine scholarship holders and researchers, and deepened the special relationship which represents being the only partner institute of the Max Planck Society in the region,” he said.
Eduardo Arzt, founder of IbiobaMINCYT
Damián Refojo, current director of Ibioba, highlighted the impressive turnout of researchers and students, “which demonstrates the importance that these events have for the local scientific community; “It is a unique opportunity for students to interact and present their work to Argentine and German scientists of the highest international level.” As in all meetings of this type, much of the best exchange occurs in informal meetings, coffees and conversations around the posters displayed with research and discoveries.
Neher – now officially retired from the laboratory – is usually involved in meetings where students and young researchers participate., like this one in Buenos Aires, or the traditional Lindau meeting, famous for having dozens of Nobel Prize winners in the same place for a week. He was always interested in mechanisms and how electricity is also behind biological processes and thus discovered “ion channels”, associated with his name and that of the also German Bert Sakmann, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1991. Trained as a physicist , He often says that curiosity and being fascinated by scientific problems and thinking about them almost obsessively (at least for a while) is central to obtaining results.
During his conference, the German Erwin Neher cited a hero of local medicine, Eduardo De RobertisMINCYT
“All funds should go to him,” said one biologist jokingly but seriously after Lucas Garibaldi’s talk, which closed the first session of Frontiers in Biosciences, yesterday. Garibaldi had told for 25 minutes how works to increase biodiversity in the Argentine agricultural and livestock area par excellence where monocultures predominate of the “green desert”, as it was defined. The interesting thing about the work of Garibaldi, a Conicet researcher at the University of Río Negro and author of the Ipbes report, is that it not only shows the diagnosis of the fatal extinction of species – something that harms human beings in multiple ways – but also goes in search of local solutions.
The title of his dissertation was “How to design multifunctional landscapes” and he showed the objective that the lands of the Argentine plains continue to provide food and foreign exchange, but at the same time add other species and the ecosystem is not so monotonous and degraded. “What we do is change the single species, so that there are biological corridors to generate natural habitats and achieve more production and more biodiversity, that is what we are looking for. What we propose has a lot of benefits, they are landscapes with many functionalities, where the quality of the food is maintained, but at the same time with more pollination, less costs in pesticides, less diseases,” he explained.
The idea, which they are already working on in various fields in several provinces, is to restore the natural cycle with the addition of water corridors, the introduction of native flora on the edges of the fields and strategic sites; strategies that do not modify the total yield of the field and improve, for example, pollination. “Up to 20% of the field can be refunctionalized and achieve the same profitability,” he said., and marked the change of era regarding sensitivity in environmental issues in the face of evidence of climate change. “The businessman wants to be carbon neutral and is very innovative. And he also sees the degradation of the earth, and he sees it clearly. In the 1990s the soybean model won, but now the degradation is evident, with many costs in agrochemicals that work less and less,” Garibaldi concluded.
The Argentine Lucas Garibaldi told for 25 minutes how he works to increase biodiversity in the Argentine agricultural and livestock area par excellence MINCYT
Before him he had broken the ice Nicole Dubilier, from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, who spoke about the frontier of knowledge, still scarce, that exists on marine biodiversity. In particular, Dubilier has dedicated himself to studying the symbiosis between marine invertebrates such as certain mussels with bacteria that help them acquire energy. The interesting thing, Dubilier noted, is that these are organisms that obtain their energy not from photosynthesis (like plants), but from chemosynthesis, something that can be promising not only from the point of view of strict knowledge of how the organism works. nature. “At least 15 groups of bacteria have chemosynthetic symbiosis. Associated with at least two protists and nine animal groups,” said the researcher.
For its part, Amy Austin, Ifeva/Conicet researcher, told about her team’s work on the carbon cycle in terrestrial ecosystems in arid areas of the planet. What seems technical, or of a very particular chemistry, actually has practical implications on climate change since it is vital to know the way in which lands and oceans absorb part – as much as half – of the gases that produce global warming; The other half goes into the atmosphere and is what seriously disrupts the climatic condition. “We are interested in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, which are 40% of terrestrial ecosystems and where 35% of the population lives. And that will increase due to human activity,” he explained. Austin and his team are seeking critical information about how much carbon dry land takes up to rethink how these ecosystems are defined.
The frontiers of bioscience also include neurosciences, with technical talks on brain plasticity and, without contradiction, about the functions of the different areas of the brain, as well as studies on how chemotherapy can be improvedor the way in which epigenetics can help control tumors (talk by Asifa Akhtar, the vice president of the Max Planck Institute, of Pakistani origin).
The opening ceremony will be today afternoon and will have the participation of the Argentine Minister of Science Daniel Filmus and the representative of the German embassy in the country, Peter Neven. The conference closes tomorrow with the talk of Stefan Kaufmannalso by Max Planck, about the lessons of vaccination against tuberculosis.
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