In Vivo Phenotyping for the Early Detection of Drought Stress in Tomato

Drought stress imposes a major constraint over a crop yield and can be expected to grow in importance if the climate change predicted comes about. Improved methods are needed to facilitate crop management via the prompt detection of the onset of stress. Here, we report the use of an in vivo OECT (organic electrochemical transistor) sensor, termed as bioristor, in the context of the drought response of the tomato plant. The device was integrated within the plant's stem, thereby allowing for the continuous monitoring of the plant's physiological status throughout its life cycle. Bioristor was able to detect changes of ion concentration in the sap upon drought, in particular, those dissolved and transported through the transpiration stream, thus efficiently detecting the occurrence of drought stress immediately after the priming of the defence responses. The bioristor's acquired data were coupled with those obtained in a high-throughput phenotyping platform revealing the extreme complementarity of these methods to investigate the mechanisms triggered by the plant during the drought stress event

Nanoparticles exhibiting self-regulating temperature as innovative agents for Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia

During the last few years, for therapeutic purposes in oncology, considerable attention has been focused on a method called magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH) based on local heating of tumor cells. In this paper, an innovative, promising nanomaterial, M48 composed of iron oxide-based phases has been tested. M48 shows self-regulating temperature due to the observable second order magnetic phase transition from ferromagnetic to paramagnetic state. A specific hydrophilic coating based on both citrate ions and glucose molecules allows high biocompatibility of the nanomaterial in biological matrices and its use in vivo. MFH mediator efficiency is demonstrated in vitro and in vivo in breast cancer cells and tumors, confirming excellent features for biomedical application. The temperature increase, up to the Curie temperature, gives rise to a phase transition from ferromagnetic to paramagnetic state, promoting a shortage of the r2 transversal relaxivity that allows a switch in the contrast in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Combining this feature with a competitive high transversal (spin-spin) relaxivity, M48 paves the way for a new class of temperature sensitive T2 relaxing contrast agents. Overall, the results obtained in this study prepare for a more affordable and tunable heating mechanism preventing the damages of the surrounding healthy tissues and, at the same time, allowing monitoring of the temperature reached

Managing succession in social enterprises: the case of San Patrignano.

The article aims at extending theory on succession in social enterprises as hybrid organizational forms by building upon the family business literature and by analyzing a longitudinal case study. Despite the relevance of succession in mission-driven organizations, the literature on founder and leader transition is scant. The topic is most frequently researched in the family business literature. Addressing the need of extending research on this kind of organizations, we analyze the case study of the San Patrignano Community, a hybrid non profit organization and one of the largest drug rehabilitation communities in the world. The in-depth case study analysis – highlighting how the community is handling this transition and the succession process from the foundation family (Muccioli) to a more professionalized management team – aims to contribute to the literature on leadership succession in social enterprises, taking into account their specificities. A dynamic and systemic analytical model is defined and recommendations for managers preparing their hybrid organizations to such a pinpoint event are drawn. The findings suggest that successful transition in hybrid organizations is dependent on the capacity to maintain the alignment between the mix of social and economic objectives, the organizational identity, the governance and the operations

Design and Implementation of an Information System for Groundwater Management

The continuous increase in water demand for various uses underlines the importance of supply problems in the general context of water resources management. In this domain it would clearly be useful to collect and make available all the data currently stored on different paper supports and kept by several regional agencies. This would provide an immediate overview of tbe resources, and also permit forecasting the future demand for tbe various utilizations. This paper describes a project involving a database to be used for groundwater resources management, conceived not only as a support for research activity, but also as a contribution to developing new and more efficient managementprocedures. The database has been designed to be used on a personal computer, with software readily available on the market

Introducing state variables in Organic Electrochemical Transistors with application to biophysical systems

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are transducing devices that, placed in contact with an electrolyte solution, detect the ionic composition of that solution by measuring the channel current I. OECTs enable the streaming of continuously updated zero-to-low latency information and show, therefore, promise for being used as highly efficient biosensors. Nevertheless, apart from simple geometries, decoding such an information may be infeasible. Here, we show how.. can be processed to derive a reduced set of two variables that account for most of the information of a system: (i) the modulation m is the current gained by the system compared to its initial value; (ii) the effective time te is the time over which the response of the system stays above the 65% of its final value m and te can be reported in a diagram that is akin to the state space diagrams used in thermodynamics: points in the diagram describe the state of a system at a specific time; trajectories in the diagram describe the time evolution of that system. We show that the total electric charge.. exchanged by the system between two states A and B is independent on the path taken between them. This, in turn, implies that m and te are state variables of the system. In experiments with Solanum lycopersicum tomato plants, we show how this concept can be used to extract relevant information about a biophysical system without direct knowledge of its internal workings

Shaping Durum Wheat for the Future: Gene Expression Analyses and Metabolites Profiling Support the Contribution of BCAT Genes to Drought Stress Response.

Global climate change, its implications for agriculture, and the complex scenario presented by the scientific community are of worldwide concern. Drought is a major abiotic stress that can restrict plants growth and yields, thus the identification of genotypes with higher adaptability to drought stress represents one of the primary goals in breeding programs. During abiotic stress, metabolic adaptation is crucial for stress tolerance, and accumulation of specific amino acids and/or as secondary metabolites deriving from amino acid metabolism may correlate with the increased tolerance to adverse environmental conditions. This work, focused on the metabolism of branched chain-amino acids (BCAAs) in durum wheat and the role of branched-chain amino acid aminotransferases (BCATs) in stress response. The role of BCATs in plant response to drought was previously proposed for Arabidopsis, where the levels of BCAAs were altered at the transcriptional level under drought conditions, triggering the onset of defense response metabolism. However, in wheat the role of BCAAs as a trigger of the onset of the drought defense response has not been elucidated. A comparative genomic approach elucidated the composition of the BCAT gene family in durum wheat. Here we demonstrate a tissue and developmental stage specificity of BCATs regulation in the drought response. Moreover, a metabolites profiling was performed on two contrasting durum wheat cultivars Colosseo and Cappelli resulting in the detection of a specific pattern of metabolites accumulated among genotypes and, in particular, in an enhanced BCAAs accumulation in the tolerant cv Cappelli further supporting a role of BCAAs in the drought defense response. The results support the use of gene expression and target metabolomic in modern breeding to shape new cultivars more resilient to a changing climate