Two specialists from the Cienfuegos Center for Environmental Studies (CEAC) are attending a regional theoretical-practical course for the extraction of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and identification of cyanobacteria by PCR, which is being held from March 11 to 15 at the Microbial Resource Biotechnology Laboratory of the Sonora Technological Institute, in Obregón, Mexico.

Together with academics from 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries, Cuba is represented by researcher Gabriel L. Rojas Abrahantes and Dariel Robaina Colina.

The course aims to strengthen regional capacities for training human resources in the identification of cyanobacteria that produce cyanotoxins using molecular techniques.

Although the proliferation of cyanobacteria in freshwater bodies is a recurrent and widespread phenomenon in the region, it is little studied in some countries.

These phenomena pose a potential risk to human health as they develop in domestic water, drinking water sources, aquaculture and recreational waters, as explained by Dr. Lisbet Díaz Asencio, Assistant Researcher at CEAC.

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