91 results match your criteria: "Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre MARE[Affiliation]"

Article Synopsis
  • Luteolin-7-O-glucoside (Lut7) shows potential benefits for the central nervous system by reducing inflammation, oxidative stress, and neuronal damage.
  • In lab tests, Lut7 improved cell viability in both undifferentiated and differentiated SH-SY5Y cells exposed to neurotoxic conditions and demonstrated high antioxidant activity compared to synthetic alternatives.
  • Lut7 treatment also modulated inflammatory cytokines in immune cells, suggesting its neuroprotective effects may warrant further investigation for treating neurodegenerative diseases.
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Impacts of low concentrations of nanoplastics on leaf litter decomposition and food quality for detritivores in streams.

J Hazard Mater

May 2022

Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Calçada Martim de Freitas, Coimbra 3000-456, Portugal; Department of Biology & CESAM, University of Aveiro, Aveiro 3810-193, Portugal.

In forested streams, leaf litter decomposition is a vital ecosystem process, governed primarily by aquatic hyphomycetes. These fungi are crucial mediators of nutrients and energy to invertebrates and higher trophic levels. Very little information is available on the impact of low concentrations of different sizes of nanoplastic particles (NPPs) on leaf litter decomposition and aquatic hyphomycetes communities.

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L. is a common coastal brown seaweed associated with various benefits to human health due to its phenolic content and nutrients and is used as food through different methods of consumption. This study aims to evaluate the influence of the seaweed's gender and growth stage on different types of biological activities as well as its chemical constitution and elements present.

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Optimising Artificial Moss Growth for Environmental Studies in the Mediterranean Area.

Plants (Basel)

November 2021

Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c), Faculdade de Ciências, University of Lisbon, 1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal.

Bryophytes are poikilohydric organisms that play a key role in ecosystems, while some of them are also resistant to drought and environmental disturbances but present a slow growth rate. Moss culture in the laboratory can be a very useful tool for ecological restoration or the development of urban green spaces (roof and wall) in the Mediterranean region. Therefore, we aim to: (i) determine the optimal culture conditions for the growth of four moss species present in the Mediterranean climate, such as , , and ; (ii) study the optimal growth conditions of the invasive moss to find out if it can be a threat to native species.

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Membrane remodelling and triacylglycerol accumulation in drought stress resistance: The case study of soybean phospholipases A.

Plant Physiol Biochem

December 2021

Biosystems & Integrative Sciences Institute (BioISI), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal; Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal. Electronic address:

Agriculture is facing major constraints with the increase of global warming, being drought a major factor affecting productivity. Soybean (Glycine max) is among the most important food crops due to the high protein and lipid content of its seeds despite being considerably sensitive to drought. Previous knowledge has shown that drought induces a severe modulation in lipid and fatty acid content of leaves, related to alteration of membrane structure by lipolytic enzymes and activation of signalling pathways.

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Plastisphere in freshwaters: An emerging concern.

Environ Pollut

December 2021

Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Calçada Martim de Freitas, 3000-456, Coimbra, Portugal. Electronic address:

Plastisphere, an ecosystem of microbes thriving on floating plastic debris, has been extensively studied in marine waters since 2013. Currently, very little is known about the freshwater plastisphere. This review seeks to provide a broad insight into the freshwater science of plastisphere in the light of marine plastisphere, including research gaps, suggestions, and rising concerns, which would be of interest to the public, policymakers, and stakeholders.

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Article Synopsis
  • Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are special ocean places that help keep marine life safe and healthy while also helping people.
  • There are many types of MPAs, and this can make it confusing to know how well they work, so a new guide called The MPA Guide has been created to help people understand them better.
  • This guide shows how to set up and improve MPAs, what they can do for nature and people, and what needs to happen for them to succeed.
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Climatic Alterations Influence Bacterial Growth, Biofilm Production and Antimicrobial Resistance Profiles in spp.

Antibiotics (Basel)

August 2021

Centro de Investigação Interdisciplinar em Sanidade Animal (CIISA), Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária, Universidade de Lisboa, 1300-477 Lisbon, Portugal.

Climate change is expected to create environmental disruptions that will impact a wide array of biota. Projections for freshwater ecosystems include severe alterations with gradients across geographical areas. Life traits in bacteria are modulated by environmental parameters, but there is still uncertainty regarding bacterial responses to changes caused by climatic alterations.

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Trace element bioaccumulation in hypersaline ecosystems and implications of a global invasion.

Sci Total Environ

December 2021

Instituto Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario y Forestal (IRIAF), Centro de Investigación Agroambiental El Chaparrillo, Ciudad Real, Spain.

Hypersaline ecosystems are under increasing threat due to anthropogenic pressures such as environmental pollution and biological invasions. Here we address the ecotoxicological implications of the Artemia franciscana (Crustacea) invasion in saltpans of southern Spain. This North American species is causing the extinction of native Artemia populations in many parts of the globe.

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Influence of river regulation and instream habitat on invertebrate assemblage' structure and function.

Sci Total Environ

November 2021

Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Calçada Martim de Freitas, 3000-456 Coimbra, Portugal.

Dams modify geomorphology, water quantity, quality and timing of stream flows affecting ecosystem functioning and aquatic biota. In this study, we addressed the structural and functional macroinvertebrate community alterations in different instream mesohabitats of two Portuguese rivers impaired by dams. We sampled macroinvertebrates in riffles, runs and pools of river sites downstream of the dams (i.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how the diversity of detritivores (organisms that break down dead organic material) affects the decomposition of litter in streams across a global scale, involving 38 streams in 23 countries.
  • Results show a positive correlation between detritivore diversity and litter decomposition, with this effect being particularly strong in tropical regions.
  • The findings highlight the potential impact of detritivore extinctions on decomposition processes, especially in tropical areas where diversity is already low and environmental stressors are common.
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Assessing the efficiency of low-cost cleaning methods for diatoms from intertidal sediment samples.

J Microbiol Methods

August 2021

Postgraduate Program in Tropical Biodiversity (PPGBIO), Federal University of Amapá, 68.903-419 Macapá, Brazil. Electronic address:

This study aims to compare the effectiveness of several low-cost reagents in obtaining high-quality diatom slides for microphytobenthos research. We evaluated the performance of eight reagents in sediment samples of beach intertidal zones. For each of the tested reagents, different pre-treatment conditions (pre-washed; non-washed) and three different temperatures (room temperature at 26 °C, 60 °C, and 100 °C) were also evaluated.

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To exploit the nutraceutical and biomedical potential of selected seaweed-derived polymers in an economically viable way, it is necessary to analyze and understand their quality and yield fluctuations throughout the seasons. In this study, the seasonal polysaccharide yield and respective quality were evaluated in three selected seaweeds, namely the agarophyte , the carrageenophyte (both red seaweeds) and the alginophyte (brown seaweed). It was found that the agar synthesis of .

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The by-products of olive oil industry are a major ecological issue due to their phenolic content, highly toxic organic load, and low pH. However, they can be recovered and reused, since their components have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and photoprotector properties. In this work, oil-in-water creams containing three different olive oil industry by-products extracts were produced without the use of organic solvents.

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Running waters contribute substantially to global carbon fluxes through decomposition of terrestrial plant litter by aquatic microorganisms and detritivores. Diversity of this litter may influence instream decomposition globally in ways that are not yet understood. We investigated latitudinal differences in decomposition of litter mixtures of low and high functional diversity in 40 streams on 6 continents and spanning 113° of latitude.

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Over the past decades, three major challenges to marine life have emerged as a consequence of anthropogenic emissions: ocean warming, acidification and oxygen loss. While most experimental research has targeted the first two stressors, the last remains comparatively neglected. Here, we implemented sequential hierarchical mixed-model meta-analyses (721 control-treatment comparisons) to compare the impacts of oxygen conditions associated with the current and continuously intensifying hypoxic events (1-3.

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Spotting intruders: Species distribution models for managing invasive intertidal macroalgae.

J Environ Manage

March 2021

Centro de Investigación Mariña, Universidade de Vigo, EcoCost, Facultade de Ciencias do Mar, Edificio CC Experimentais, Campus de Vigo, As Lagoas, Marcosende, 36310 Vigo, Spain; Departamento de Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal, Universidade de Vigo, Campus As Lagoas-Marcosende, 36310 Vigo, Spain.

Invasive macroalgae represent one of the major threats to marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and structure, as well as being important drivers of ecosystem services depletion. Many such species have become well established along the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula. However, the lack of information about the distribution of the invaders and the factors determining their occurrence make bioinvasions a difficult issue to manage.

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Untangling causes of variation in mercury concentration between flight feathers.

Environ Pollut

January 2021

Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), ISPA - Instituto Universitário, Rua Jardim Do Tabaco 34, 1149-041, Lisbon, Portugal.

Bird feathers are one of the most widely used animal tissue in mercury biomonitoring, owing to the ease of collection and storage. They are also the principal excretory pathway of mercury in birds. However, limitations in our understanding of the physiology of mercury deposition in feathers has placed doubt on the interpretation of feather mercury concentratoins.

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Invasive Seaweeds in the Iberian Peninsula: A Contribution for Food Supply.

Mar Drugs

November 2020

Department of Life Sciences, Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), University of Coimbra, 3000-456 Coimbra, Portugal.

Article Synopsis
  • The introduction of exotic marine organisms, particularly non-indigenous seaweeds, can cause significant ecological and economic harm, with 407 species identified globally.
  • In the Iberian Peninsula, about 50 non-indigenous seaweed species have been documented, some of which are invasive, posing threats to local ecosystems while also offering potential industrial benefits.
  • This review aims to assess the occurrences of these non-indigenous seaweeds in the Iberian Peninsula and explore their possible applications in the food industry due to their nutritional and bioactive properties.
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Life history theory suggests a trade-off between costly activities such as breeding and migration and somatic self-maintenance. However, how the short-term cost of parental effort is expressed in species with a slow pace-of-life is not well understood. Also, investigating carry-over effects of migration is most meaningful when comparing migratory strategies within the same population, but this has rarely been done.

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Seaweed-Based Products and Mushroom β-Glucan as Tomato Plant Immunological Inducers.

Vaccines (Basel)

September 2020

Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, 3000-456 Coimbra, Portugal.

The effects of the abiotic inducers β-glucan, extracted from Shiitake ), BFIICaB () and BKPSGII (. X sp.) on tomato plants infected with f.

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The Evolution Road of Seaweed Aquaculture: Cultivation Technologies and the Industry 4.0.

Int J Environ Res Public Health

September 2020

Department of Life Sciences, Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), University of Coimbra, 3000-456 Coimbra, Portugal.

Seaweeds (marine macroalgae) are autotrophic organisms capable of producing many compounds of interest. For a long time, seaweeds have been seen as a great nutritional resource, primarily in Asian countries to later gain importance in Europe and South America, as well as in North America and Australia. It has been reported that edible seaweeds are rich in proteins, lipids and dietary fibers.

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Presently, there is lack of a vaccine that would lead to immunization against the virus COVID-19, but here are some of the characteristics that various seaweeds have and which may provide a glimpse into potential solutions of this global health problem in the near future and possibly forearm us for any future such pandemics. Many species of marine algae contain significant quantities of complex structural sulphated polysaccharides that have been shown to inhibit the replication of enveloped viruses. Other compounds, both of red algae (e.

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Seaweed's Bioactive Candidate Compounds to Food Industry and Global Food Security.

Life (Basel)

August 2020

Department of Life Sciences, Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), University of Coimbra, 3000-456 Coimbra, Portugal.

The world population is continuously growing, so it is important to keep producing food in a sustainable way, especially in a way that is nutritious and in a sufficient quantity to overcome global needs. Seaweed grows, and can be cultivated, in seawater and generally does not compete for arable land and freshwater. Thus, the coastal areas of the planet are the most suitable for seaweed production, which can be an alternative to traditional agriculture and can thus contribute to a reduced carbon footprint.

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