Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Recent developments in low-cost imaging hyperspectral cameras have opened up new possibilities for high-throughput phenotyping (HTP), allowing for high-resolution spectral data to be obtained in the visible and near-infrared spectral... more
Recent developments in low-cost imaging hyperspectral cameras have opened up new possibilities for high-throughput phenotyping (HTP), allowing for high-resolution spectral data to be obtained in the visible and near-infrared spectral range. This study presents, for the first time, the integration of a low-cost hyperspectral camera Senop HSC-2 into an HTP platform to evaluate the drought stress resistance and physiological response of four tomato genotypes (770P, 990P, Red Setter and Torremaggiore) during two cycles of well-watered and deficit irrigation. Over 120 gigabytes of hyperspectral data were collected, and an innovative segmentation method able to reduce the hyperspectral dataset by 85.5% was developed and applied. A hyperspectral index (H-index) based on the red-edge slope was selected, and its ability to discriminate stress conditions was compared with three optical indices (OIs) obtained by the HTP platform. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) applied to the OIs and H-index ...
Research Interests:
Research on organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) based sensors to monitor in vivo plant traits such as xylem sap concentration is attracting attention for their potential application in precision agriculture. Fabrication and... more
Research on organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) based sensors to monitor in vivo plant traits such as xylem sap concentration is attracting attention for their potential application in precision agriculture. Fabrication and electronic aspects of OECT have been the subject of extensive research while its characterization within the plant water relation context deserves further efforts. This study tested the hypothesis that the response (R) of an OECT (bioristor) implanted in the trunk of olive trees is inversely proportional to the water flux density flowing through the plant (Jw). This study also examined the influence on R of vapor pressure deficit (VPD) as coupled/uncoupled with light. R was hourly recorded in potted olive trees for a 10-day period concomitantly with Jw (weight loss method). A subgroup of trees was bagged in order to reduce VPD and in turn Jw, and other trees were located in a walk-in chamber where VPD and light were independently managed. R was tightly sens...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The present study aimed to investigate the extent of variability and relationships between grain yield and morpho-physiological durum wheat traits. Sufficient variability was observed for most characters. Based on stress indices, either... more
The present study aimed to investigate the extent of variability and relationships between grain yield and morpho-physiological durum wheat traits. Sufficient variability was observed for most characters. Based on stress indices, either widely or specifically, adapted lines were identified. Path analysis pointed out to above ground biomass, harvest index, spike fertility and spike number as yield determinants, suggesting that these traits are of interest in the breeding program. The measured traits were classified within 6 principal components accounting for 79.45 % of the total variation. Breeding lines dispersed along first principal component exhibited substantial differences in performance and stress tolerance abilities. Cluster C3 lines were high yielding and stress tolerant. From this cluster, lines L24 and L14 were scored as the best for 7 and 5 traits out of 17 characters, respectively. Both lines are proposed for release and as parents in crosses to take advantage of their ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Drought stress imposes a major constraint over a crop yield and can be expected to grow in importance if the climate change predicted comes about. Improved methods are needed to facilitate crop management via the prompt detection of the... more
Drought stress imposes a major constraint over a crop yield and can be expected to grow in importance if the climate change predicted comes about. Improved methods are needed to facilitate crop management via the prompt detection of the onset of stress. Here, we report the use of an in vivo OECT (organic electrochemical transistor) sensor, termed as bioristor, in the context of the drought response of the tomato plant. The device was integrated within the plant’s stem, thereby allowing for the continuous monitoring of the plant’s physiological status throughout its life cycle. Bioristor was able to detect changes of ion concentration in the sap upon drought, in particular, those dissolved and transported through the transpiration stream, thus efficiently detecting the occurrence of drought stress immediately after the priming of the defence responses. The bioristor’s acquired data were coupled with those obtained in a high-throughput phenotyping platform revealing the extreme comple...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Lycopene β-cyclase (tlcy-b) tomatoes, obtained by modulating carotenogenesis via genetic engineering, contain a large amount of β-carotene, as clearly visible by their intense orange colour. In the present study we have... more
Lycopene β-cyclase (tlcy-b) tomatoes, obtained by modulating carotenogenesis via genetic engineering, contain a large amount of β-carotene, as clearly visible by their intense orange colour. In the present study we have subjectedtlcy-btomatoes to anin vitrosimulated digestion and analysed the effects of digestate on cell proliferation. To this aim we used HT-29 human colon adenocarcinoma cells, grown in monolayers, as a model. Digested tomatoes were diluted (20 ml, 50 ml and 100 ml/l) in culture medium and added to the cells for different incubation times (24 h, 48 h and 72 h). Inhibition of cell growth by tomato digestate was dose-dependent and resulted from an arrest of cell cycle progression at the G0/G1 and G2/M phase and by apoptosis induction. A down-regulation of cyclin D1, Bcl-2 and Bcl-xl expression was observed. We also found that heat treatment of samples before digestion enhanced β-carotene release and therefore cell growth inhibition. To induce with purified β-carotene ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests: RNA, Biology, Virology, Medicine, Biological Sciences, and 15 moreGeneral, Virus, Genome, Tomato, Cucumber mosaic virus, Satellite, Molecular cloning, Protein Sequence Analysis, Protoplasts, Amino Acid Sequence, Base Sequence, Nucleotides, Lycopersicon esculentum, Molecular Sequence Data, and Medical and Health Sciences
ABSTRACT In this study, sixteen polymorphic microsatellite makers were developed and characterized from expressed sequence tag sequence of the swimming crab, Portunus trituberculatus. The analysis of polymorphic was performed by using 30... more
ABSTRACT In this study, sixteen polymorphic microsatellite makers were developed and characterized from expressed sequence tag sequence of the swimming crab, Portunus trituberculatus. The analysis of polymorphic was performed by using 30 specimens from the coastal waters of Xiangshan, Zhejiang province, China. The number of alleles at each locus ranged from 4 to 14 with an average of seven alleles per locus. The ranges of observed and expected heterozygosity were from 0.517–1.000 to 0.508–0.736, respectively. The polymorphism information content ranged from 0.375 to 0.710. Four loci were found deviate significantly from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. These microsatellite loci will be helpful for the genetic evaluation of P. trituberculatus enhancement.
Research Interests:
Escherichia coli has been recognized as the principal indicator of fecal contamination of water. Indeed, E. coli is the only species in the coliform group found in relationship with gastrointestinal tract of human and warm‐blooded animals... more
Escherichia coli has been recognized as the principal indicator of fecal contamination of water. Indeed, E. coli is the only species in the coliform group found in relationship with gastrointestinal tract of human and warm‐blooded animals and subsequently excreted in large numbers in the human feces. To obtain a complete picture of water quality and therefore, a better protection of public health, different techniques for water analysis have been proposed. In this article, we describe an alternative method that uses SYBR green real time‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) technology to identify and quantify all E. coli biotypes in a group of wastewater samples collected from a wastewater depurator located in South of Italy. This new RT‐PCR protocol is accurate in measuring the concentration of chromosomal E. coli DNA using the amplification of three new specific fragments of the following bacteria genes: CadC, HNS, and Allan whose sequence is specific for E. coli family and conserved...
Research Interests:
High-throughput phenotyping has opened whole new perspectives for crop improvement and better understanding of quantitative traits in plants. Generation of loss-of-function and gain-of-function plant mutants requires processing and... more
High-throughput phenotyping has opened whole new perspectives for crop improvement and better understanding of quantitative traits in plants. Generation of loss-of-function and gain-of-function plant mutants requires processing and imaging a large number of plants in order to determine unknown gene functions and phenotypic changes generated by genetic modifications or selection of new traits. The use of phenomics for the evaluation of transgenic lines contributed significantly to the identification of plants more tolerant to biotic/abiotic stresses and furthermore, helped in the identification of unknown gene functions. In this chapter we describe the High-throughput phenotyping (HTP) platform working in our facility, drawing the general protocol and showing some examples of data obtainable from the platform. Tomato transgenic plants over-expressing the arginine decarboxylase 2 gene, which is involved in the polyamine biosynthetic pathway, were analyzed through our HTP facility for ...
Research Interests:
The chaperone HSP70 protein is widely present in many different tumors and its expression correlates with an increased cell survival, low differentiation and poor therapeutic outcome in human breast cancer. The intracellular protein has... more
The chaperone HSP70 protein is widely present in many different tumors and its expression correlates with an increased cell survival, low differentiation and poor therapeutic outcome in human breast cancer. The intracellular protein has prevalently a cytoprotective function, while the extracellular HSP70 mediates immunological responses. Evolutionarily, HSPs are well conserved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, and human HSP70 shows a strong similarity to that of plant origin. In the present paper, we have tested the potential effect of recombinant HSP70, from Arabidopsis thaliana, on cell survival and metastatic properties of breast cancer cells. Our data show that HSP70 sustains cell viability in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 breast tumoral cells and increases Cyclin D1 and Survivin expression. The extracellular HSP70 triggers cell migration and the activation of MMPs particularly in MDA-MB-231 cells. Furthermore, under UV-induced stress condition, the low levels of phospho-AKT were increased...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Solanum melongena (eggplant) cv. Picentia and the wild species Solanum integrifolium were transformed with both a wild type (wt) and four mutagenized versions of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene Bt43 belonging to the cry3 class. The Bt... more
Solanum melongena (eggplant) cv. Picentia and the wild species Solanum integrifolium were transformed with both a wild type (wt) and four mutagenized versions of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene Bt43 belonging to the cry3 class. The Bt gene was partly modified in its nucleotide sequence by replacing four target regions (W: +1 to +170; X: +592 to+1057 ; Y: +1203 to
Research Interests: Genetics, Molecular Biology, Plant Biology, Biology, Plant Molecular Biology, and 15 moreMedicine, Gene expression, Bacillus thuringiensis, Insect Resistance, Polymerase Chain Reaction, Gene, Codon Usage, Solanum Melongena, Larval Development, Transgenic plant, Nucleotides, Biochemistry and cell biology, Nucleotide sequence, Amino acid composition, and Leptinotarsa decemlineata
Research Interests:
In the present study we have evaluated whether (i) 5-azacytidine (AZA), a well-known demethylating agent, could be able to modify the phenotype of human preadipocytes and (ii) the modified cells could possess multilineage differentiation... more
In the present study we have evaluated whether (i) 5-azacytidine (AZA), a well-known demethylating agent, could be able to modify the phenotype of human preadipocytes and (ii) the modified cells could possess multilineage differentiation potential. Human preadipocytes at the 3rd passage were treated for 48 or 96 h with 10 μM AZA and then expanded up to passage 5. Stem cell markers, such as OCT-4, Nanog, and Sox2, were upregulated after 96 h of treatment with the demethylating treatment. Further, decreases in the expression of genes, such as adipose differentiation-related protein, characterizing the preadipocytes were noted. Our data showed that AZA-treated preadipocytes differentiated into cell lineages derived from mesoderm. Indeed, after incubation with inductive media for 3 weeks, osteblast-, chondrocyte-, and myoblast-like cells were detected in the cultures. Interestingly, both upregulation of stem cell markers and differentiation potential were maintained by the treated cultures expanded until the 5th passage. Taken together, our results suggest that AZA, without the use of transduction methods, convert preadipocytes to a less differentiated state that can be induced, under suitable stimuli, to the formation of mesoderm-derived cell lineages.
Research Interests: Biology, Cell Biology, Stem Cell, Medicine, Gene expression, and 15 moreBiological Sciences, Cell Differentiation, Humans, Cellular differentiation, DNA methylation, Phenotype, Adipocytes, Chondrocytes, Cell Proliferation, Sox, Osteocytes, Gene expression profiling, Azacitidine, Muscle cells, and Medical and Health Sciences
The multitude of forms observed in flowering plants is largely because of their ability to establish new axes of growth during postembryonic development. This process is initiated by the formation of secondary meristems that develop into... more
The multitude of forms observed in flowering plants is largely because of their ability to establish new axes of growth during postembryonic development. This process is initiated by the formation of secondary meristems that develop into vegetative or reproductive branches. In the blind and torosa mutants of tomato, initiation of lateral meristems is blocked during shoot and inflorescence development, leading to a strong reduction in the number of lateral axes. In this study, it is shown that blind and torosa are allelic. The Blind gene has been isolated by positional cloning, and it was found that the mutant phenotype is caused by a loss of function of an R2R3 class Myb gene. RNA interference-induced blind phenocopies confirmed the identity of the isolated gene. Double mutant analysis shows that Blind acts in a novel pathway different from the one to which the previously identified Lateral suppressor gene belongs. The findings reported add a new class of transcription factors to th...
Research Interests: Genetics, Biology, Medicine, Multidisciplinary, RNA interference, and 15 moreMutation, MYB, Gene, Tomato, Phenotype, Transcription Factor, Gene Isolation and Expresstion, Amino Acid Sequence, Base Sequence, PLANT PROTEINS, DNA binding proteins, Meristem, Lycopersicon esculentum, Molecular Sequence Data, and Positional Cloning
Research Interests: Photosynthesis, Plant Biology, Biology, Drought Stress, Medicine, and 15 moreGenetically Modified Crops, Arabidopsis thaliana, Chlorophyll, High throughput screening, Chlorophyll Fluorescence, Gene transfer techniques, Plant growth, Crop Production, Droughts, Drought tolerance, Dehydration, Genetic variation, Physiological Stress Markers, Lycopersicon esculentum, and Leaf water potential
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Plant Biology, Biology, Molecular Breeding, Tilling, Lycopene, and 4 moreCarotenoid, Ripening, Allele, and Petal
BACKGROUNDThe responses of foods to microwave exposure are usually evaluated only in terms of physicochemical properties, thus undervaluing the importance of DNA in an authentication process by methods based on polymerase chain reaction... more
BACKGROUNDThe responses of foods to microwave exposure are usually evaluated only in terms of physicochemical properties, thus undervaluing the importance of DNA in an authentication process by methods based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In this study, the time effect of microwave heating on some meat physicochemical properties and DNA quality has been investigated.RESULTSCooking loss, instrumental colour, pH and other physicochemical parameters varied significantly during microwave cooking, reaching the lowest/highest values after 2.5 min of cooking. The exposure of meat to microwaves was found to affect characteristically the quality of extracted DNA (i.e. yield, purity and degradation). PCR products of both mitochondrial and nuclear regions were successfully observed in all samples. However, the band for large fragments became progressively fainter as treatment time increased.CONCLUSIONSMicrowave heating caused physicochemical changes in bovine supraspinatus muscle and infl...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Genetics, Functional Analysis, Biotechnology, Biology, European Union, and 15 moreGene expression, Food Analysis, Genetically Modified Crops, Genetic Engineering, European Commission, Food supply, Animals, Animal health, Genetic modification, Comparative Analysis, Human health, Food Sciences, Gel electrophoresis, Food and Chemical Toxicology, and Adverse effect
Research Interests:
Totipotent cDNA libraries representative of all the potentially expressed sequences in a genome would be of great benefit to gene expression studies. Here, we report on an innovative method for creating such a library for durum wheat... more
Totipotent cDNA libraries representative of all the potentially expressed sequences in a genome would be of great benefit to gene expression studies. Here, we report on an innovative method for creating such a library for durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum) and its application for gene discovery. The use of suitable quantities of 5-azacytidine during the germination phase induced the demethylation of total DNA, and the resulting seedlings potentially express all of the genes present in the genome. A new wheat microarray consisting of 4925 unigenes was developed from the totipotent cDNA library and used to screen for genes that may contribute to differences in the disease resistance of two near-isogenic lines, the durum wheat cultivar Latino and the line 5BIL-42, which are respectively susceptible and resistant to powdery mildew. Fluorescently labeled cDNA was prepared from the RNA of seedlings of the two near-isogenic wheat lines after infection with a single powdery milde...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Recently, we purified to homogeneity and characterized a low-molecular-weight calcium-dependent phospholipase A2 (PLA2) from developing elm seed endosperm. This represented the first purified and characterized PLA2 from a plant tissue.... more
Recently, we purified to homogeneity and characterized a low-molecular-weight calcium-dependent phospholipase A2 (PLA2) from developing elm seed endosperm. This represented the first purified and characterized PLA2 from a plant tissue. The full sequences of two distinct but homologous rice (Oryza sativa) cDNAs are given here. These encode mature proteins of 119 amino acids (PLA2-I, preceded by a 19 amino acid