Search

In the last decade, the application of DNA techniques for the analysis of plants and vegetal materials has been addressed to the species Cannabis Sativa L. The aim was twofold: to better understand genetic mechanisms regulating the chemical properties of this plant (to study both its toxic effects and its therapeutic applications), and also to offer an advanced tool for forensic investigations against the illegal cannabis market and related crimes. Phenotypic features can significantly vary among cannabis varieties, depending on different types and concentrations of cannabinoids in the plant. This quality has genetic bases. The state of the art on the knowledge of Cannabis genetics will be presented in this chapter, extending from the description of the Cannabis genome and sequencing of the principal genes involved in the cannabinoids biosynthetic pathway, to molecular tools useful for identification purposes in forensics.

It is generally held that there are genetic factors for dizygotic (DZ) twinning, but the pattern of inheritance is far from clear.We report on a rare pedigree with three sets of spontaneous DZ female twin births in three successive generations. To our knowledge no similar pedigrees have been reported in literature.Zygosity determination in three pairs of twins was performed with ABO, MN and Rh blood groups from erythrocytes and with STR analysys from samples of saliva.In our pedigree, the direct trasmission of the DZ twinning through the maternal line seems show an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance. We believe that the inheritance of DZ twinning appears to be recessive in most case and autosomal dominant only in rare instances. It is plausible with the hypothesis that the expression of the dizygotic twinning trait in a mother shows a genetic heterogeneity.

Naïve sea bass juveniles (38.4 ± 4.5 g) were intraperitoneally infected with a sublethal dose of betanodavirus isolate 378/I03, followed after 43 days by a similar boosting. This infection resulted in an overall mortality of 7.6 %. At various intervals, sampling of fish tissues were performed to investigate: i) B and T lymphocyte content in organs and tissues; ii), proliferation of leucocytes re-stimulated in vitro with inactivated virus; iii) presence of serum antibody specific for betanodavirus; iv) expression of genes coding for the following immunoregulatory molecules involved in innate and acquired responses: IFN-1, Mx, IL-1, Cox-2; IL-10, TGF-, TCR, CD4, CD8, IgM, by using a quantitative PCR array system developed for sea bass. The obtained results showed a detectable increase of T cells and B cells in PBL during betanodavirus infection. Furthermore, leucocytes obtained from blood, head kidney, and gills showed a detectable in “vitro” increase in viability upon addition of inactivated viral particles, as determined by measuring intracellular ATP concentration. ELISA analysis of sera showed that exposure to nodavirus induced a low, but specific antibody titer measured 43 days after infection, despite the presence of measurable levels of natural antibody. Finally, a strong upregulation of genes coding for IFN-1, Mx, and IgM was identified after both infection and boosting. Interestingly, an upregulation of Cox-2 until boosting, and of TGF- and IL-10 after boosting was also observed, while the other tested genes did not show any significant variations with respect to mock-treated fish. Overall, our work represents a first comprehensive analysis of cellular and molecular immune parameters in a fish species exposed to a pathogenic virus. L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore http://www.sciencedirect.com/

In recent years the cloning of genes coding for immuno-regulatory peptides, as well as the sequencing of genomes, provided fish immunologists with a growing amount of information on nucleotide sequences. Research is now also addressed in investigating the functional immunology counterpart of nucleotide sequence transcripts in various fish species. In this respect, studies on functional immunology of T cell activities are still at their beginning, and much work is needed to investigate T cell responses in teleost fish species. In this review we summarise the current knowledge on the group of genes coding for main T cell-related peptides in fish, and the expression levels of these genes in organs and tissues. Particular attention is paid to European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), a marine species in which some information on functional immunology has been obtained, and we reassume here the expression of some T cell-related genes in basal conditions. In addition, we provide original data showing that T cells purified from the intestinal mucosa of sea bass with a specific mAb, express transcripts for TRgamma, TRbeta, CDalpha and RAG-1, thus showing similarities with intraepithelial leucocytes of mammals. L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore http://www.sciencedirect.com

The 2011 collaborative exercise of the ISFG Italian Working Group GeFI was aimed at validating the five ENFSI/EDNAP miniSTR loci D1S1656, D2S441, D10S1248, D12S391 and D22S1045. The protocol required to type at least 50 multilocus profiles from locally resident individuals and two blind bloodstains in duplicate (i.e., using at least two different commercial kits), and to send the electropherograms to the Organizing Committee. Nineteen laboratories distributed across Italy participated, collecting a total of 960 samples. Full concordance was found for the five new miniSTRs as observed from the comparison of 13,150 alleles. The inspection of the electropherograms allowed the identification of a very limited number of mistypings in the miniSTR genotypes thus contributing to the establishment of an high quality Italian database of frequencies.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) U/K and J/T are sister haplogroups within the superhaplogroup R. They are both common in Europe, with a combined overall frequency similar to the one reported for H, the most common European haplogroup (40–50%). In this study, we selected 159 Italian subjects, already ascribed to U/K and J/T by RFLP typing, and assigned each mtDNA to specific clades/subclades by investigating at least one diagnostic coding region SNP. For each sister haplogroup, one multiplex PCR and one SNaPshot minisequencing reaction were set up targeting 16 U/K and 7 J/T coding region SNPs. Each mtDNA sample was clearly assigned to a specific subclade, which could be further subdivided into several minor sub-branches according to peculiar HVS I/II motifs. Such a molecular dissection of haplogroups U/K and J/T could be extremely useful to reduce the overall analysis time and labor intensive sequencing procedures in high volume forensic casework, for example when it is important to rapidly exclude samples in order to restrict the number of suspects.