Current and future strategies for wine yeast lees valorization

Wine lees is a sludge material mainly composed of dead yeast precipitated at the bottom of wine tanks. Along with grape pomace and grape stalks, it is one of the main by-products of the winemaking industry. Given that wine lees are considered a soil pollutant, their disposal represents a cost for wineries. Numerous wine lees recovery and valorization strategies have been proposed, with a particularly steep increase in published research in recent years. This attention is strictly linked to the concepts of circular economy and environmental sustainability that are attracting the interest of the scientific community. In this review, an overview on the available wine lees recovery and valorization strategies is reported. Additionally, the methods for the extraction and valorization of yeast's cell wall polysaccharides (\u3b2-glucans and mannoproteins) are discussed. Finally, current and future innovative applications in different sectors of yeast \u3b2-glucans and mannoproteins are described and critically discussed

Antibacterial Effect of Aluminum Surfaces Untreated and Treated with a Special Anodizing Based on Titanium Oxide Approved for Food Contact

One of the main concerns of the food industry is microbial adhesion to food contact surfaces and consequent contamination. We evaluated the potential bacteriostatic/bactericidal efficacy of aluminum surfaces with different large-scale roughness (0.25, 0.5 and 1 um) before and after the surface treatment with a special anodizing based on titanium oxide nanotechnology (DURALTI®) and after 3 different sanitizing treatments, e.g., UV, alcohol and a natural product named Gold lotion. Four Gram-negative (Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 1402, Yersinia enterocolitica ATCC 9610 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27588) and four Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212, Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579 and Listeria monocytogenes NCTT 10888) bacteria were screened. As far as concerns aluminum surfaces without nanotechnology surface treatment, an overall bacteriostatic effect was observed for all strains with respect to the initial inoculum that was 106 CFU/mL. Conversely, an overall bactericidal effect was observed both for Gram-negative and -positive bacteria on DURALTI®-treated aluminum disks, regardless of roughness and sanitizing treatment. These results are innovative in terms of the great potential of the antibacterial activity of nanotechnologically treated food contact surfaces and their combination with some sanitizing agents that might be exploited in the food industry

The macromolecular diversity of Italian monovarietal red wines

13openInternationalItalian coauthor/editorWhile red wine phenolics have been extensively studied, polysaccharides and proteins have not received the same level of attention, especially when considering Italian wines. In this study, for the first time, quantitative and qualitative data on the macromolecular (proteins and polysaccharides) and tannin composition of 110 monovarietal red wines from 11 of the most important Italian grape varieties are reported. The winemaking did not include any filtration, oak contact, fining treatments, or ageing on yeast lees. Results highlighted a great inter- and intra- varietal diversity. The protein content ranged between 0 and 159 mg/L, polysaccharides between 211 and 1081 mg/L and total tannins between 171 and 3746 mg/L, with averages of 41 mg/L, 497 mg/L and 1687 mg/L, respectively. Six varieties with protein content representative of the variability observed were selected and submitted to electrophoresis. Within each variety, the SDS-PAGE mobility of protein-tannin complexes was similar but showed two distinct patterns for wines of different varieties (higher mobility for Corvina, Teroldego and Raboso Piave, lower mobility for Nebbiolo, Aglianico, Cannonau), suggesting that the Italian monovarietal wines can be diverse also in their colloidal-forming structures. This can be explained by looking at the different percentages of protein-reactive tannins (TBSA) on the total tannin content (TMCP), which is a varietal characteristicopenMarangon, Matteo; De Iseppi, Alberto; Gerbi, Vincenzo; Mattivi, Fulvio; Moio, Luigi; Piombino, Paola; Parpinello, Giuseppina Paola; Rolle, Luca; Slaghenaufi, Davide; Versari, Andrea; Vrhovsek, Urska; Ugliano, Maurizio; Curioni, AndreaMarangon, M.; De Iseppi, A.; Gerbi, V.; Mattivi, F.; Moio, L.; Piombino, P.; Parpinello, G.P.; Rolle, L.; Slaghenaufi, D.; Versari, A.; Vrhovsek, U.; Ugliano, M.; Curioni, A

DNA methylation levels in candidate genes associated with chronological age in mammals are not conserved in a long-lived seabird

© 2017 De Paoli-Iseppi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Most seabirds do not have any outward identifiers of their chronological age, so estimation of seabird population age structure generally requires expensive, long-term banding studies. We investigated the potential to use a molecular age biomarker to estimate age in short-tailed shearwaters (Ardenna tenuirostris). We quantified DNA methylation in several A. tenuirostris genes that have shown age-related methylation changes in mammals. In birds ranging from chicks to 21 years of age, bisulphite treated blood and feather DNA was sequenced and methylation levels analysed in 67 CpG sites in 13 target gene regions. From blood samples, five of the top relationships with age were identified in KCNC3 loci (CpG66: R2 = 0.325, p = 0.019). In feather samples ELOVL2 (CpG42: R2 = 0.285, p = 0.00048) and EDARADD (CpG46: R2 = 0.168, p = 0.0067) were also weakly correlated with age. However, the majority of markers had no clear association with age (of 131 comparisons only 12 had a p-value < 0.05) and statistical analysis using a penalised lasso approach did not produce an accurate ageing model. Our data indicate that some age-related signatures identified in orthologous mammalian genes are not conserved in the long-lived short tailed shearwater. Alternative molecular approaches will be required to identify a reliable biomarker of chronological age in these seabirds

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Applicazioni del lievito come ingrediente alimentare

Il lievito, da sempre impiegato nella produzione di panificati e bevande alcoliche, negli ultimi decenni \ue8 entrato in un grande numero di produzioni alimentari come ingrediente o fonte di additivi. In ambito biotecnologico, infatti, questo microrganismo \ue8 sfruttato per la produzione di acidi organici, vitamine, enzimi ed altre molecole ad alto valore aggiunto destinate ad applicazioni alimentari e/o nutraceutiche, mentre la biomassa inattivata di levito \ue8 entrata in molte preparazioni alimentari come insaporitore o fonte di proteine e minerali. A queste applicazioni gi\ue0 affermate se ne affiancano altre in fase di sviluppo che vedono il lievito impiegato come microrganismo probiotico o fonte di beta glucani e mannoproteine ad azione emulsionante. In particolare, l\u2019estrazione di queste due molecole sembra rappresentare un\u2019importante possibilit\ue0 per il recupero e la valorizzazione dei sottoprodotti a base di lievito (fecce di birra e vino, biomassa da produzioni biotecnologiche) il cui potenziale, ad oggi, \ue8 solo parzialmente sfruttato