Marine plastic pollution is a global issue affecting ecosystems and various aspects of human life. The scientific community is exploring new monitoring and containment approaches. Because in-situ sampling campaigns are time and resource demanding, there is a focus on integrating different approaches for marine litter monitoring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrosatellite analysis identifies specific genotypes and the genetic relationship between strains. Our objective was to analyze the genotypes of strains isolated on different wards of a Tertiary-Referral University Center. We evaluated 70 strains in total, isolated from samples of patients admitted to five different wards over two years (January 2015-December 2016).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe age determination in fast-growing short-living species, such as European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), has been widely recognized as a difficult task and bias introduced by readers leads to bias in reconstructing the population age structure. In this context, it is worth to note that age structure of fish population represents key information in fishery ecology and for stock assessment models. The uncertainty in estimating the age of the European anchovy by otolith reading is linked to the number of false-growth increments (checks) laid down before the annulus formation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGrapevine ( ssp. ) is a perennial crop especially important for wine and fruit production. The species is highly polymorphic with thousands of different varieties selected by farmers and clonally propagated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCaper (Capparis spinosa L.) is a xerophytic shrub cultivated for its flower buds and fruits, used as food and for their medicinal properties. Breeding programs and even proper taxonomic classification of the genus Capparis has been hampered so far by the lack of reliable genetic information and molecular markers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDissemination of resistance to carbapenems among Enterobacteriaceae through plasmids is an increasingly important concern in health care worldwide. Here we report the first description of an IncX3 plasmid carrying the blaKPC-3 gene in a strain of Serratia marcescens isolated from a kidney-liver transplanted patient at the transplantation centre ISMETT (Istituto Mediterraneo per i Trapianti e Terapie ad Alta Specializzazione, Palermo, Italy). To localize the transposable element containing the resistance-associated gene Next-Generation Sequencing of the bacterial DNA was performed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA number of scientific papers in the last few years singled out the influence of environmental conditions on the spatial distribution of fish species, highlighting the need for the fisheries scientific community to investigate, besides biomass estimates, also the habitat selection of commercially important fish species. The Mediterranean Sea, although generally oligotrophic, is characterized by high habitat variability and represents an ideal study area to investigate the adaptive behavior of small pelagics under different environmental conditions. In this study the habitat selection of European anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus and European sardine Sardina pilchardus is analyzed in two areas of the Mediterranean Sea that largely differentiate in terms of environmental regimes: the Strait of Sicily and the North Aegean Sea.
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