Yield, pomological characteristics, bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity of Annona cherimola Mill. grown in mediterranean climate

The agronomic and qualitative responses of the cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.) fruit grown in Mediterranean climate are not properly studied. Fruits of Fino de Jete, the most diffused worldwide cultivar of cherimoya, and Torre 1 a new genotype obtained by breeding program in Sicily, Italy, were collected at commercial ripening and subjected to productive (yield efficiency, number of fruits, crop load), analytical (fruit weight, transversal diameter, longitudinal diameter, total soluble solid content, titratable acidity, seed weight, seed number, peel and pulp weight, pulp/seed ratio and colorimetric analysis), bioactive compound content (total antioxidant activity, Phenolic and Carotenoi…

Pomological traits, sensory characteristics and antioxidant activity in fruits of nine loquat cultivars grown in Sicily.

Anti-inflamamtory effects of Sicilian pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) nut in an in vitro model of human intestinal epithelium

Protective effects of melatonin in inflamed intestinal epithelium are associated with reduced NF-κB activation and changes in DNA methylation status

Melatonin is the main product of the pineal gland but is also released in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). Production of melatonin at GIT is independent of the photoperiod and contributes almost completely to plasma melatonin concentration during daylight hours. The physiological role of melatonin at GIT is poorly characterized but recently anti-inflammatory effects have been reported. In this study, we evaluated the effect of Melatonin in intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) stimulated by Interleukin-1β. Our results clearly show that melatonin at micromolar concentrations inhibits the inflammatory response in IEC. The protective effect is expressed through a marked decrease in release and ex…

Oxidative stress, oxidative stress-based diseases and Mediterranean diet. Raman spectroscopy monitoring of skin carotenoids in healthy individuals and in breast cancer operated patients under controlled diets and in vitro assessment of platelet aggregability.

Abstract Evaluating the level of body antioxidants may reveal a more or less severe oxidative stress condition in either healthy people or subjects with pathologies, and can be suggestive for suitable dietary interventions to possibly affect it. In this work taking advantage from the Raman spectroscopic technology to measure the level of skin carotenoids in a simple and non-invasive manner, healthy people (age 15 to 70, n=155) and women who had surgery for breast cancer (BC) (age 38 to 76, n=71) have been screened to assess to what extent an increased intake of fruit and vegetables (healthy people and patients), associated with diets based on a classical Mediterranean style and that did not…

Identifying conserved genes involved in crop tolerance to cold stress

Low temperature is a limiting factor for crop productivity in tropical and subtropical climates. Cold stress response in plants involves perceiving and relaying the signal through a transcriptional cascade composed of different transduction components, resulting in altered gene activity. We performed a meta-analysis of four previously published datasets of cold-tolerant and cold-sensitive crops to better understand the gene regulatory networks and identify key genes involved in cold stress tolerance conserved across phylogenetically distant species. Re-analysing the raw data with the same bioinformatics pipeline, we identified common cold tolerance-related genes. We found 236 and 242 common…