New SARS-CoV-2 Infection Detected in an Italian Pet Cat by RT-qPCR from Deep Pharyngeal Swab.

The pandemic respiratory disease COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged in Wuhan in December 2019 and then spread throughout the world; Italy was the most affected European country. Despite close pet-human contact, little is known about the predisposition of pets to SARS-CoV-2. Among these, felines are the most susceptible.

Extracellular Vesicles in Human Oogenesis and Implantation.

Reproduction, the ability to generate offspring, represents one of the most important biological processes, being essential for the conservation of the species. In mammals, it involves different cell types, tissues and organs, which, by several signaling molecules, coordinate the different events such as gametogenesis, fertilization and embryo development. In the last few years, the role of Extracellular Vesicles, as mediators of cell communication, has been investigated in every phase of these complex processes.

Non-Coding RNAs in Endometrial Physiopathology.

The Human Genome Project led to the discovery that about 80% of our DNA is transcribed in RNA molecules. Only 2% of the human genome is translated into proteins, the rest mostly produces molecules called non-coding RNAs, which are a heterogeneous class of RNAs involved in different steps of gene regulation. They have been classified, according to their length, into small non-coding RNAs and long non-coding RNAs, or to their function, into housekeeping non-coding RNAs and regulatory non-coding RNAs.

Molecular structure of the rDNA intergenic spacer (IGS) in Triturus: implications for the hypervariability of rDNA loci.

Ribosomal DNA (rDNA) variation in the species Triturus vulgaris meridionalis (Amphibia, Urodela) is remarkable because of unusually high intraspecific variability in the number and distribution of ribosomal loci in the karyotype; in addition, portions of the intergenic spacer (IGS) are clustered at chromosomal loci where they are not associated with ribosomal 18S and 28S RNA genes. These clusters are referred to as extraribosomal, and they appear to consist mostly of repetitive BamHI elements. In this paper, we report the complete nucleotide sequence of an IGS of T.

Molecular cytogenetics of the ribosomal (18S + 28S and 5S) DNA loci in primitive and advanced urodele amphibians.

In the present work we performed a cytogenetic analysis of the ribosomal (18S + 28S and 5S) loci in amphibian species belonging to the advanced family Salamandridae (genera Triturus, Salamandra, and Salamandrina) and in the primitive hynobiid Salamandrella keyserlingii (family Hynobiidae). In each analyzed karyotype the 5S rDNA sites appear to be stable, and definite in number, while an intraspecific variability both in number and chromosomal location of the 18S + 28S rDNA loci has been found in some Triturus species. In particular, an evolutionary trend toward a large intraspecific variability of the 18S + 28S rDNA loci has been found in the T.