Search results for " Biologia"
showing 10 items of 700 documents
Composition and geographic variation of the bacterial microbiota associated with the coelomic fluid of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus
2020
AbstractIn the present work, culture-based and culture-independent investigations were performed to determine the microbiota structure of the coelomic fluid of Mediterranean sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus individuals collected from two distinct geographical sites neighboring a high-density population bay and a nature reserve, respectively. Next Generation Sequencing analysis of 16S rRNA gene (rDNA) showed that members of the Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Fusobacteria phyla, which have been previously reported to be commonly retrieved from marine invertebrates, dominate the overall population of microorganisms colonizing this liquid tissue, with minority bacterial genera exhibiting rem…
Use of Troponin as a predictor for cardiovascular diseases in patients with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus
2020
People with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have two- to four-fold increased cardiovascular mortality in comparison to the general population. With the identification of new therapeutic targets and hypoglycemic drugs for T2DM, the need for a better stratification of CVD risk has emerged to select patients who may need intensive or specific treatment. At present, risk stratification is based on clinical, demographic, and biochemical factors. High sensitivity cardiac troponin (hs-cTn) increases after several ischemic and non-ischemic insults and it is considered a marker of myocardial injury. This review summarizes the main findings about hs-cTn utilization for risk stratification in people w…
Coexposure to sulfamethoxazole and cadmium impairs development and attenuates transcriptional response in sea urchin embryo
2017
Abstract Among sulfonamides, sulfamethoxazole represents one of the most widely employed. A considerable amount of sulfamethoxazole is introduced into the marine environment after utilization in aquaculture. The cytotoxicity of sulfamethoxazole relies mainly on arylhydroxylamine metabolites and it is associated with the production of reactive oxygen species. Cadmium represents a metal largely employed in several anthropic activities and it is toxic for all living organisms even at low concentrations. Since it is not degraded, cadmium irreversibly accumulates into cells. In order to understand the mechanisms of response to changes in the chemical environment, we investigated by light microsc…
An Intronic cis-Regulatory Element Is Crucial for the Alpha Tubulin Pl-Tuba1a Gene Activation in the Ciliary Band and Animal Pole Neurogenic Domains …
2017
In sea urchin development, structures derived from neurogenic territory control the swimming and feeding responses of the pluteus as well as the process of metamorphosis. We have previously isolated an alpha tubulin family member of Paracentrotus lividus (Pl-Tuba1a, formerly known as Pl-Talpha2) that is specifically expressed in the ciliary band and animal pole neurogenic domains of the sea urchin embryo. In order to identify cis-regulatory elements controlling its spatio-temporal expression, we conducted gene transfer experiments, transgene deletions and site specific mutagenesis. Thus, a genomic region of about 2.6 Kb of Pl-Tuba1a, containing four Interspecifically Conserved Regions (ICRs…
Diversification of spatiotemporal expression and copy number variation of the echinoid hbox12/pmar1/micro1 multigene family
2017
Changes occurring during evolution in the cis-regulatory landscapes of individual members of multigene families might impart diversification in their spatiotemporal expression and function. The archetypal member of the echinoid hbox12/pmar1/micro1 family is hbox12-a, a homeobox-containing gene expressed exclusively by dorsal blastomeres, where it governs the dorsal/ventral gene regulatory network during embryogenesis of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. Here we describe the inventory of the hbox12/pmar1/micro1 genes in P. lividus, highlighting that gene copy number variation occurs across individual sea urchins of the same species. We show that the various hbox12/pmar1/micro1 genes grou…
Non-primate lentiviral vectors and their applications in gene therapy for ocular disorders
2018
Lentiviruses have a number of molecular features in common, starting with the ability to integrate their genetic material into the genome of non-dividing infected cells. A peculiar property of non-primate lentiviruses consists in their incapability to infect and induce diseases in humans, thus providing the main rationale for deriving biologically safe lentiviral vectors for gene therapy applications. In this review, we first give an overview of non-primate lentiviruses, highlighting their common and distinctive molecular characteristics together with key concepts in the molecular biology of lentiviruses. We next examine the bioengineering strategies leading to the conversion of lentiviruse…
The Sea Urchin sns5 Chromatin Insulator Shapes the Chromatin Architecture of a Lentivirus Vector Integrated in the Mammalian Genome.
2016
Lentivirus vectors are presently the favorite vehicles for therapeutic gene transfer in hematopoietic cells. Nonetheless, these vectors integrate randomly throughout the genome, exhibiting variegation of transgene expression due to the spreading of heterochromatin into the vector sequences. Moreover, the cis-regulatory elements harbored by the vector could disturb the proper transcription of resident genes neighboring the integration site. The incorporation of chromatin insulators in flanking position to the transferred unit can alleviate both the above-mentioned dangerous effects, due to the insulator-specific barrier and enhancer-blocking activities. In this study, we report the valuable …
A novel community driven software for functional enrichment analysis of extracellular vesicles data
2017
Bioinformatics tools are imperative for the in depth analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput data. Most of the software tools are developed by specific laboratories or groups or companies wherein they are designed to perform the required analysis for the group. However, such software tools may fail to capture "what the community needs in a tool". Here, we describe a novel community-driven approach to build a comprehensive functional enrichment analysis tool. Using the existing FunRich tool as a template, we invited researchers to request additional features and/or changes. Remarkably, with the enthusiastic participation of the community, we were able to implement 90% of the requested feat…
Histones, Their Variants and Post-translational Modifications in Zebrafish Development.
2020
Complex multi-cellular organisms are shaped starting from a single-celled zygote, owing to elaborate developmental programs. These programs involve several layers of regulation to orchestrate the establishment of progressively diverging cell type-specific gene expression patterns. In this scenario, epigenetic modifications of chromatin are central in influencing spatiotemporal patterns of gene transcription. In fact, it is generally recognized that epigenetic changes of chromatin states impact on the accessibility of genomic DNA to regulatory proteins. Several lines of evidence highlighted that zebrafish is an excellent vertebrate model for research purposes in the field of developmental ep…
The Drosophila junctophilin gene is functionally equivalent to its four mammalian counterparts and is a modifier of a Huntingtin poly-Q expansion and…
2018
[EN] Members of the Junctophilin (JPH) protein family have emerged as key actors in all excitable cells, with crucial implications for human pathophysiology. In mammals, this family consists of four members (JPH1-JPH4) that are differentially expressed throughout excitable cells. The analysis of knockout mice lacking JPH subtypes has demonstrated their essential contribution to physiological functions in skeletal and cardiac muscles and in neurons. Moreover, mutations in the human JPH2 gene are associated with hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathies; mutations in JPH3 are responsible for the neurodegenerative Huntington's disease-like-2 (HDL2), whereas JPH1 acts as a genetic modifier in C…