Ricerc@Sapienza

Objectives: To investigate the long-term safety and efficacy of a treatment switch to dual ART with atazanavir/ ritonavir ! lamivudine versus continuing a standard regimen with atazanavir/ritonavir ! 2NRTI in virologically suppressed patients.

AIM To investigate the adhesion and anti-inflammatory effects of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) in the colonic mucosa of healthy and ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, both in vivo and ex vivo in an organ culture model. METHODS For the ex vivo experiment, a total of 98 patients (68 UC patients and 30 normal subjects) were included.

L’immagine del DNA, notissima icona di casualità e destino, di speranza e condanna al contempo, permea, tramite il significato che rappresenta, numerosi aspetti della società del nostro tempo.Attraverso testi, immagini, grafiche e reperti originali che rievocano storie di scienziati e di scoperte, il volume intende far emergere le caratteristiche della formidabile invenzione dell’evoluzione quale “libro della vita”, “alfabeto del vivente”.

L'informazione genetica e il linguaggio umano sono gli unici sistemi capaci di conservare e trasmettere un numero illimitato di messaggi: con un insieme di poche lettere (21 per l'italiano, 4 per linguaggio genetico) e di segni di punteggiatura si può scrivere qualsiasi testo e codificare il programma di un numero infinito di esseri viventi.

The self-assembling processes underlining the capabilities of facially differentiated ("Janus") polycationic amphiphilic cyclodextrins (paCDs) as non-viral gene nanocarriers have been investigated by a pluridisciplinary approach. Three representative Janus paCDs bearing a common tetradecahexanoyl multitail domain at the secondary face and differing in the topology of the cluster of amino groups at the primary side were selected for this study. All of them compact pEGFP-C3 plasmid DNA and promote transfection in HeLa and MCF-7 cells, both in absence and in presence of human serum.

ACKGROUND:
A number of studies which have investigated isolation patterns in human populations rely on the analysis of intra- and inter-population genetic statistics of mtDNA polymorphisms. However, this approach makes it difficult to differentiate between the effects of long-term genetic isolation and the random fluctuations of statistics due to reduced sample size.
AIM:
To overcome the confounding effect of sample size when detecting signatures of genetic isolation.
SUBJECTS AND METHODS:

Neotropical cichlids include hundreds of species whose taxonomy has benefited of molecular phylogeny and whose karyotype evolution has been related to the amount and distribution of different classes of repetitive sequences. This study provides the first integrative molecular (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 and 16S sequences) and cytogenetic analyses of wild samples of the green terror Andinoacara rivulatus, a cichlid naturally distributed in Ecuador and spread throughout the world as an aquarium pet.

Drosophila telomeres are sequence-independent structures maintained by transposition to chromosome ends of three specialized retroelements rather than by telomerase activity. Fly telomeres are protected by the terminin complex that includes the HOAP, HipHop, Moi and Ver proteins. These are fast evolving, non-conserved proteins that localize and function exclusively at telomeres, protecting them from fusion events. We have previously suggested that terminin is the functional analogue of shelterin, the multi-protein complex that protects human telomeres.

Centromeres are highly specialized chromatin domains that enable chromosome segregation and orchestrate faithful cell division. Human centromeres are composed of tandem arrays of ?-satellite DNA, which spans up to several megabases. Little is known about the mechanisms that maintain integrity of the long arrays of ?-satellite DNA repeats. Here, we monitored centromeric repeat stability in human cells using chromosome-orientation fluorescent in situ hybridization (CO-FISH).

Oregonin is an open-chain diarylheptanoid isolated from Alnus incana bark that possesses remarkable antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, inhibits adipogenesis, and can be used in the prevention of obesity and related metabolic disorders. Here, we aimed to investigate the effects of oregonin on the epigenetic regulation in cells as well as its ability to modulate DNA methylating enzymes expression and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copies.