DAIRY FARM PLANNING FOR THE RECEIPE OF EU RULES ON THE HYGIENE OF FODDSTUFFS

A shift promoted by Regione Toscana have arranged productive dairy farm guidelines for the application of Reg. CE 852/2004. The document defines risk assessment management and obligation. For guidelines drafting we used: dairy production system flowchart, chemical, physical, microbiological risk, and check list. Milk dairy production was divided into four stages: animal health and welfare, nutrition and watering regime, environment, milking hygiene and milk storage

Determination of deoxynivalenol and nivalenol producing chemotypes of Fusarium graminearum isolated from durum wheat in different Italian regions

Durum wheat production in Italy is economically of great importance. Fusarium graminearum is the main fusarium head blight (FHB) causal agent in wheat, reducing both yield and grain quality. F. graminearum produces several mycotoxins and, among trichothecenes, deoxynivalenol (DON) and nivalenol (NIV) are the most studied for their toxicity towards humans and animals. DON-producing isolates can be further distinguished on the basis of the predominant acetyl-DON derivative in 3-acetyldeoxynivalenol (3-ADON) or 15acetyldeoxynivalenol (15-ADON). In order to evaluate possible mycotoxin contamination risks in food, it is very important to know which chemotype is the prevalent in a F. graminearum population. F. graminearum sensu stricto strains were collected from symptomatic durum wheat heads and grains of several naturally infected fields located mostly in Emilia – Romagna, The Marche, Lazio, Tuscany and Umbria. A multiplex PCR in the region of genes Tri12, located in the terminal gene cluster of trichothecenes, was used to characterize 187 single-spore isolates of F. graminearum as NIV, 3-ADON and 15-ADON chemotypes. All the three chemotypes were present in the F. graminearum population studied. The most frequent chemotype was 15-ADON (83.4%), followed by 3-ADON (10.7%) and NIV (5.9%). NIV-producing isolates were found only in Emilia-Romagna (3.5%), Umbria (33.3%) and The Marche (5.7%)

Cotton Cultivation and Textile Production in the Arabian Peninsula during Antiquity: The Evidence from Madâ'in Sâlih (Saudi Arabia) and Qal'at al-Bahrain (Bahrain)

International audienceThe discovery of seeds and textiles from Gossypium (cotton) in Achaemenian levels of the mid-6th–late 4th century B.C. at Qal’at al-Bahrain, Bahrain and in early 1st millennium A.D. at Madâ’in Sâlih, Saudi Arabia, reveals the role played by the Arabian Peninsula as a textile production centre during the centuries before and after the beginning of the Christian era. Both these sites were situated on important trade routes, overseas (Qal’at al-Bahrain) and overland (Madâ’in Sâlih), and it is likely that at least part of the cotton production was intended for trade, complementing and perhaps competing with other sources of cotton textiles in the contemporary Middle East. In the arid climate of the Arabian Peninsula, cotton was probably grown in association with irrigated date palm gardens where a wide array of other crops was grown, as is shown by the analysis of charred seeds and wood from occupation levels at both sites. The present article places these particular finds in the larger context of cotton cultivation in the Middle East and India

DAIRY FARM PLANNING FOR THE RECEIPE OF EU RULES ON THE HYGIENE OF FODDSTUFFS

A shift promoted by Regione Toscana have arranged productive dairy farm guidelines for the application of Reg. CE 852/2004. The document defines risk assessment management and obligation. For guidelines drafting we used: dairy production system flowchart, chemical, physical, microbiological risk, and check list. Milk dairy production was divided into four stages: animal health and welfare, nutrition and watering regime, environment, milking hygiene and milk storage

Combining immunofluorescence with in situ proximity ligation assay: a novel imaging approach to monitor protein–protein interactions in relation to subcellular localization

The in situ Proximity Ligation Assay (PLA) is suited for visualizing protein–protein interactions and posttranslational protein modifications in both tissue sections and in vitro cell cultures. Accurate identification and quantification of protein–protein interactions are critical for in vitro cell analysis, especially when studying the dynamic involvement of proteins in various processes, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. Here, we monitored the interactions between protein kinase-Cζ (PKCζ) and Bcl10 protein in untreated and etoposide (VP-16)-treated C4-I cells by means of a new combined morphological approach and validated it by taking stock of our previous proteomic and biochemical work (Chiarini et al. in J Proteome Res 11:3996–4012, 2012). We first analyzed the colocalization of PKCζ and Bcl10 proteins through classical immunofluorescent colocalization analysis. On the basis of these results, we developed a novel imaging approach combining immunofluorescence (IF) techniques with in situ PLA to identify the PKCζ·Bcl10 complexes at the level of a specific subcellular compartment, i.e., the nuclear envelope (NE). By this means, we could show that the amount of PKCζ·Bcl10 complexes localized at the NE of C4-I cells during proliferation or after treatment with VP-16 closely corresponded to our previous purely biochemical results. Hence, the present findings demonstrate that the combination of in situ PLA with classical IF detection is a novel powerful analytical tool allowing to morphologically demonstrate new specific protein–protein interactions at level of subcellular organelles, the complexes functions of which can next be clarified through proteomic/ biochemical approaches

Caratterizzazione biomolecolare di ceppi di Fusarium spp. isolati da seme di Eruca sativa e Diplotaxis spp.

Recenti infezioni a carico di rucola coltivata e selvatica in Italia sono state causate da Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. raphani. Considerando che i miceti riferibili alla specie F. oxysporum sono agenti di deperimenti o marciumi radicali su centinaia di ospiti vegetali, distinti sulla base di risposte ospite specifiche in formae speciales e che la specie è ubiquitaria e cosmopolita, risulta difficile effettuare una identificazione tempestiva e certa con il solo approccio morfologico. L’esatta identificazione degli agenti causali è punto cruciale nella valutazione della sanità delle sementi e nella gestione di questa problematica. Nel presente lavoro sono stati analizzati 39 lotti di semente, di cui 31 di rucola selvatica e 8 di rucola coltivata, su substrato semiselettivo (Komada’s medium) per la ricerca di Fusarium spp. Da questi lotti sono stati reperiti 24 isolati, che, unitamente a 2 ceppi di riferimento, sono stati saggiati biologicamente tramite prove di patogenicità differenziali in ambiente controllato e caratterizzati molecolarmente sulla base dello studio dei geni ITS e EF-1. Nessun isolato da seme, analizzato in questa indagine, risulta appartenere a F. oxysporum f. sp. raphani e la maggioranza dei ceppi fungini isolati appartiene a Gibberella fujikuroi Complex

Epigenetic asymmetry of imprinted genes in plant gametes.

Plant imprinted genes show parent-of-origin expression in seed endosperm, but little is known about the nature of parental imprints in gametes before fertilization. We show here that single differentially methylated regions (DMRs) correlate with allele-specific expression of two maternally expressed genes in the seed and that one DMR is differentially methylated between gametes. Thus, plants seem to have developed similar strategies as mammals to epigenetically mark imprinted genes

Hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope fractionation in body fluid compartments of dairy cattle according to season, farm, breed, and reproductive stage

Environmental temperature affects water turnover and isotope fractionation by causing water evaporation from the body in mammals. This may lead to rearrangement of the water stable isotope equilibrium in body fluids. We propose an approach to detect possible variations in the isotope ratio in different body fluids on the basis of different homoeothermic adaptations in varying reproductive stages. Three different reproductive stages (pregnant heifer, primiparous lactating cow, and pluriparous lactating cow) of two dairy cattle breeds (Italian Friesian and Modenese) were studied in winter and summer. Blood plasma, urine, faecal water, and milk were sampled and the isotope ratios of H (2H/1H) and O (18O/16O) were determined. Deuterium excess and isotope-fractionation factors were calculated for each passage from plasma to faeces, urine and milk. The effects of the season, reproductive stages and breed on δ2H and δ18O were significant in all the fluids, with few exceptions. Deuterium excess was affected by season in all the analysed fluids. The correlations between water isotope measurements in bovine body fluids ranged between 0.6936 (urine-milk) and 0.7848 (urine-plasma) for δ2H, and between 0.8705 (urine-milk) and 0.9602 (plasma-milk) for δ18O. The increase in both isotopic δ values in all body fluids during summer is representative of a condition in which fractionation took place as a consequence of a different ratio between ingested and excreted water, which leads to an increased presence of the heavy isotopes. The different body water turnover between adult lactating cattle and non-lactating heifers was confirmed by the higher isotopic δ for the latter, with a shift in the isotopic equilibrium towards values more distant from those of drinking wate