Archivio istituzionale della Ricerca - Università degli Studi di Parma
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In vitro evaluation of the biocompatibility and chondro-inductive potential of Kapton® for cartilage tissue engineering
No full textVeterinary and human biomedical research is increasingly oriented towards the development of biocompatible implantable devices capable of supporting tissue regeneration and the development of controlled release systems. Kapton (R), a polyimide known for its thermal and mechanical properties, shows potential in tissue regeneration, but its interaction with cartilage cells has not been explored in depth. This study aims to evaluate the biocompatibility, cytotoxicity and chondrocyte response on plastic materials, including polyester, polystyrene and Kapton (R), by studying cell proliferation (MTT assay), morphology (optical microscopy), oxidative stress (NO and ROS assay), wound healing capacity (scratch assay) and differentiation (gene expression of specific markers), as well as immune activity in real-time qPCR. The results demonstrate that over time Kapton (R) supports chondrocyte adhesion, viability and proliferation in a similar manner to polystyrene (PS). Instead, the migration test on Kapton (R) shows wound closure approximately 3.5-fold slower at 24 h and 4d compared to PS attributable to the surface properties of the material. Furthermore, its non-toxicity is confirmed with a reduced and nonsignificant induction of oxidative stress. Instead, polyimide maintains the chondrocyte morphology without dedifferentiation towards the fibroblastic phenotype observed with significant differences in the expression of differentiation markers (Col2, ACAN, SOX6 and SOX9) compared to polystyrene. The stable expression of IL6 confirms the absence of significant inflammatory signals. These results confirmed the chondro-inductive activity of Kapton (R) and point out the potential of this material as substrate for cartilage tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to the preserved involvement of chondrocyte phenotype in cartilage extracellular matrix synthesis
La formazione del bilancio di esercizio e la riclassificazione degli schemi a fini gestionali
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The Specialist’s Paradox: Generalist AI May Better Organize Medical Knowledge
No full textThis study investigates the ability of six pre-trained sentence transformers to organize medical knowledge by performing unsupervised clustering on 70 high-level Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms across seven medical specialties. We evaluated models from different pre-training paradigms: general-purpose, domain-adapted, and from-scratch domain-specific. The results reveal a clear performance hierarchy. A top tier of models, including the general-purpose MPNet and the domain-adapted BioBERT and RoBERTa, produced highly coherent, specialty-aligned clusters (Adjusted Rand Index > 0.80). Conversely, models pre-trained from scratch on specialized corpora, such as PubMedBERT and BioClinicalBERT, performed poorly (Adjusted Rand Index < 0.51), with BioClinicalBERT yielding a disorganized clustering. These findings challenge the assumption that domain-specific pre-training guarantees superior performance for all semantic tasks. We conclude that model architecture, alignment between the pre-training objective and the downstream task, and the nature of the training data are more critical determinants of success for creating semantically coherent embedding spaces for medical concepts
Correction: Semantic Evaluation of Nursing Assessment Scales Translations by ChatGPT 4.0: A Lexicometric Analysis (Nursing Reports, (2025), 15, 6, (211), 10.3390/nursrep15060211)
No full text: Elena Sblendorio was not included as an author in the original publication [...]
Assembling microbial consortia for the development of new plant based fermented products: the COCONUT project
No full textPE-ionomer as seal through contamination layer for packaging
No full textThe strong ionic network and polarity induced by the ionic moieties in ionomers based on IPC (Ion Pair Comonomer) concept, makes these material very well suited for application in sealing films in general, and particularly when sealing through contamination is required. A good balance between a low sealing initiation temperature (SIT) and a high plateau seal strength and low dependency of temperature vs seal strength near the sealing temperature can be achieved. Such parameters can be tuned by adding a certain % of plastomer to the ionomer. The plastomer / ionomer blends were shown to perform particularly well in presence of contaminants. Good seal through contamination performance was obtained with specific blends, especially for dairy products, ketchup and olive oil, positioning these ionomers as interest candidates as a sealing layer in packaging
Effects of foliar-sprayed bio-fertilizer with N-fixing Methylobacterium symbioticum on morpho-physiological traits of maize under varying N fertilization rates
No full textNitrogen (N) fertilization remains a critical challenge in sustainable agriculture. Plant growth-promoting bacteria offer a promising strategy to enhance nitrogen use efficiency and improve cereal crop productivity while reducing reliance on synthetic inputs. This open-field study evaluated the morpho-physiological effects of foliar application of Methylobacterium symbioticum (MS) on maize in NE Italy. Following a baseline application of liquid digestate (300 kg N ha-1) to all plots, four treatments were compared: N300 (digestate only, serving as the control); N300 + MS (digestate with MS); N350 (digestate with 50 kg ha-1 chemical N); and N320 + MS (digestate with 20 kg ha-1 chemical N and MS). ESEM imaging confirmed colonization of leaf surfaces by M. symbioticum. Its application significantly promoted aboveground growth and delayed leaf senescence by improving chlorophyll retention, increasing seasonal average SPAD from 46.9 in control to 49.4 (+5.3%, N300 + MS) and 48.8 (+4.1%, N320 + MS), likely mediated by the ascertained ACC-deaminase activity of MS. Root electrical capacitance showed treatment-specific effects, with the highest readings under the N320 + MS treatment (+54% vs. control at flowering). Yield responses were non-linear with respect to N dose, with N300 + MS showing a 12% (1,364 g/m2) and N320 + MS a 6% non-significant increase vs. control. MS-treated plants also exhibited a non-significant 5% increase in grain protein content, but significantly higher aboveground N accumulation. It is concluded that, this microbial inoculation strategy can enhance N use efficiency, particularly under reduced synthetic fertilization, presenting an environmentally-friendly and sustainable agricultural strategy for maize cultivation
Coordinated histone methylation loss and MYC activation promote translational capacity under amino acid restriction
No full textBackground
Cells adapt to nutrient fluctuations through both signaling and epigenetic mechanisms. While amino acid (AA) deprivation is known to suppress protein synthesis via mTORC1 inactivation, the epigenetic pathways that support cellular adaptation and recovery remain poorly understood. We investigated how chromatin and transcriptional changes contribute to maintaining translational capacity during AA restriction and priming cells for growth upon AA repletion.
Methods
Human cells were cultured under amino acid-replete or -depleted conditions, and global histone methylation levels were assessed by Western blotting and ChIP-seq. RNA-seq and chromatin-associated RNA-seq (chromRNA-seq) were used to evaluate gene expression and transcriptional output. Ribosome profiling and [35S]-methionine/cysteine or O-propargyl-puromycin (OPP) incorporation assays measured protein synthesis. Functional contributions of SETD8 and MYC were tested through knockdown and overexpression experiments.
Results
AA deprivation induced a selective, genome-wide loss of H4K20me1, particularly from gene bodies, and led to increased MYC expression and binding at promoter regions. These changes were most pronounced at genes encoding ribosomal proteins and translation initiation factors. Although overall protein synthesis declined during AA restriction, these cells showed increased translational capacity evidenced by accumulation of monomeric ribosomes and enhanced translation upon AA repletion. Loss of H4K20me1 was independent of mTORC1 signaling and partly driven by SETD8 protein downregulation. While MYC overexpression alone was insufficient to upregulate translation-related genes, its combination with SETD8 knockdown in nutrient-rich conditions was both necessary and sufficient to induce expression of these genes and enhance protein synthesis.
Conclusions
Our findings reveal a chromatin-based mechanism by which cells integrate metabolic status with transcriptional regulation to adapt to amino acid limitation. Loss of H4K20me1 and increased MYC activity act in parallel to prime the translational machinery during AA deprivation, enabling rapid recovery of protein synthesis upon nutrient restoration. This mechanism may help explain how cells maintain competitive growth potential under fluctuating nutrient conditions and has implications for understanding MYC-driven cancer progression