The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management

Graph-based analysis of the metabolic exchanges between two co-resident intracellular symbionts, baumannia cicadellinicola and sulcia muelleri with their insect host, homalodisca coagulata

International audienceEndosymbiotic bacteria from different species can live inside cells of the same eukaryotic organism. Metabolic exchanges occur between host and bacteria but also between different endocytobionts. Since a complete genome annotation is available for both, we built the metabolic network of two endosymbiotic bacteria, Sulcia muelleri and Baumannia cicadellinicola, that live inside specific cells of the sharpshooter Homalodisca coagulata and studied the metabolic exchanges involving transfers of carbon atoms between the three. We automatically determined the set of metabolites potentially exogenously acquired (seeds) for both metabolic networks. We show that the number of seeds needed by both bacteria in the carbon metabolism is extremely reduced. Moreover, only three seeds are common to both metabolic networks, indicating that the complementarity of the two metabolisms is not only manifested in the metabolic capabilities of each bacterium, but also by their different use of the same environment. Furthermore, our results show that the carbon metabolism of S. muelleri may be completely independent of the metabolic network of B. cicadellinicola. On the contrary, the carbon metabolism of the latter appears dependent on the metabolism of S. muelleri, at least for two essential amino acids, threonine and lysine. Next, in order to define which subsets of seeds (precursor sets) are sufficient to produce the metabolites involved in a symbiotic function, we used a graph-based method, PITUFO, that we recently developed. Our results highly refine our knowledge about the complementarity between the metabolisms of the two bacteria and their host. We thus indicate seeds that appear obligatory in the synthesis of metabolites are involved in the symbiotic function. Our results suggest both B. cicadellinicola and S. muelleri may be completely independent of the metabolites provided by the co-resident endocytobiont to produce the carbon backbone of the metabolites provided to the symbiotic system (., thr and lys are only exploited by B. cicadellinicola to produce its proteins)

BacHBerry: BACterial Hosts for production of Bioactive phenolics from bERRY fruits

BACterial Hosts for production of Bioactive phenolics from bERRY fruits (BacHBerry) was a 3-year project funded by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Union that ran between November 2013 and October 2016. The overall aim of the project was to establish a sustainable and economically-feasible strategy for the production of novel high-value phenolic compounds isolated from berry fruits using bacterial platforms. The project aimed at covering all stages of the discovery and pre-commercialization process, including berry collection, screening and characterization of their bioactive components, identification and functional characterization of the corresponding biosynthetic pathways, and construction of Gram-positive bacterial cell factories producing phenolic compounds. Further activities included optimization of polyphenol extraction methods from bacterial cultures, scale-up of production by fermentation up to pilot scale, as well as societal and economic analyses of the processes. This review article summarizes some of the key findings obtained throughout the duration of the project

Minimizing the maximum flow time in the online-TSP on the real line Citation for published version (APA): Minimizing the Maximum Flow Time in the Online-TSP on the Real Line

Abstract In the online traveling salesman problem (OlTsp) requests for visits to cities arrive online while the salesman is traveling. The F max -OlTsp has as objective to minimize the maximum flow time, which is particularly interesting for applications. Unfortunately, there can be no competitive algorithm, neither deterministic nor randomized. Hence, competitive analysis fails to distinguish online algorithms. Not even resource augmentation which is helpful in scheduling works as a remedy. This motivates the search for alternative analysis methods. We introduce a natural restriction on the adversary for the F max -OlTsp on the real line. A non-abusive adversary may only move in a direction where there are yet unserved requests. Our main result is an 8-competitive algorithm against the non-abusive adversary