1,721,025 research outputs found
Hermetia illucens (Diptera Stratiomyidae): de novo genome assembly and molecular farming units for the production and delivery of anti-inflammatory peptides
No full textHermetia illucens (Linnaeus, 1758), Diptera Stratiomyidae, also known as the Black Soldier Fly (BSF), is native of the United States but has a current cosmopolitan distribution. It is an insect of great interest, as it efficiently bio-convert organic matter into useful by-products, such as fertilizers. Moreover, its larvae and pupae can be utilized for the production of biodiesel, proteins and lipids for feed and food, antimicrobial peptides, and chitin to produce chitosan. Thanks to their body composition (protein 38-46% and fats 33-36%), fast development, and high antimicrobial properties, larvae and pupae have a high potential for large-scale production in the feed industry. H. illucens-based flour is considered as an alternative to the expensive and less sustainable protein source for feed, currently represented by oil and meal fish and soybean meal. H. illucens larvae, in fact, are included in the feed additives register of the European Union and are approved for poultry and fish feeding. Although H. illucens larvae are considered excellent feed candidates, several studies suggest that they could only partially replace traditional feeds, due to their high fatty acids content that can reduce animal growth and increase hepatic inflammation. For this reason, there is a need to improve the fatty acids composition of insects to meet the nutritional needs and health of animals. The project aims to sequence and de novo assembly the H. illucens genome, by Dovetail Genomics, to obtain detailed information on the genetic and genomic organization of this species. The precise genomic sequencing will also allow a genetic engineering approach through CRISPR/Cas9 technique, based on the introduction of the Apolipoprotein-I Milano (AIM) sequence encoding for an anti-inflammatory and anti-atherogenic protein. The genome modification will, therefore, improve the utilization of H. illucens as a feed ingredient. The flour obtained from the larvae of H. illucens-AIM could improve the nutritional value of feed and the lipid balance in animals, reducing the potential side effect of dyslipidemia caused by the use of the not engineered BSF larvae in intensive farming
Head glands of monogenoidea: morphology, functionality and potentialities in industrial production of surgery bioadhesives
No full textNews on immune checkpoint inhibitors as immunotherapy strategies in adult and pediatric solid tumors
No full textImmune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have shown unprecedented benefits in various adult cancers, and this success has prompted the exploration of ICI therapy even in childhood malignances. Although the use of ICIs as individual agents has achieved disappointing response rates, combinational therapies are likely to promise better results. However, only a subset of patients experienced prolonged clinical effects, thus suggesting the need to identify robust bio-markers that predict individual clinical response or resistance to ICI therapy as the main challenge. In this review, we focus on how the use of ICIs in adult cancers can be translated into pediatric malignances. We discuss the physiological mechanism of action of each IC, including PD-1, PD-L1 and CTLA-4 and the new emerging ones, LAG-3, TIM-3, TIGIT, B7-H3, BTLA and IDO-1, and evaluate their prognostic value in both adult and childhood tumors. Furthermore, we offer an overview of preclinical models and clinical trials currently under investigation to improve the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies in these patients. Finally, we outline the main predictive factors that influence the efficacy of ICIs, in order to lay the basis for the development of a pan-cancer immunogenomic model, able to direct young patients towards more specific immunotherapy
Methods for sperm-mediated gene transfer
No full textThe transgenic technologies represent potent biotechnological tools that allow the generation of genetically modified animals useful for basic research and for biomedical, veterinary, and agricultural applications. Among transgenic techniques, we describe here the sperm-mediated gene transfer methods that is gene transfer based on the spontaneous ability of sperm cells to bind and internalize exogenous DNA and to carry it to oocyte during fertilization, producing genetically modified animals with high efficiency
The Role of Hydrogen Peroxide in Redox-Dependent Signaling: Homeostatic and Pathological Responses in Mammalian Cells
Full text linkHydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is an important metabolite involved in most of the redox metabolism reactions and processes of the cells. H2O2 is recognized as one of the main molecules in the sensing, modulation and signaling of redox metabolism, and it is acting as a second messenger together with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and nitric oxide (NO). These second messengers activate in turn a cascade of downstream proteins via specific oxidations leading to a metabolic response of the cell. This metabolic response can determine proliferation, survival or death of the cell depending on which downstream pathways (homeostatic, pathological, or protective) have been activated. The cells have several sources of H2O2 and cellular systems strictly control its concentration in different subcellular compartments. This review summarizes research on the role played by H2O2 in signaling pathways of eukaryotic cells and how this signaling leads to homeostatic or pathological responses
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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