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Mushroom community in artificial Pinus nigra forest in Amiata mount (Tuscany, Italy) was described. 3220 fruit bodies belonging to 106 different species were found during five surveys from autumn 2014 to spring 2015. The biodiversity indices and the dominance–diversity curves indicate a discrete fungal diversity with the dominance of few species. Edible mushrooms such as Hydnum repandum, Lactarius deliciosus, L. sanguifluus, Suillus granulatus S. luteus and truffles (Tuber aestivum, T. borchii and T. macrosporum) were found in the study area. These fungi are traditionally harvested and are an important complementary economical source for local population. Considering the economic importance of these non-wood forest products, forest management should play major attention to their safeguard.

The cultivation of truffles in the Southern Hemisphere began in New Zealand in the mid-1980s and the first fruiting bodies of Tuber melanosporum were harvested in Gisborne in 1993. Cultivation started in Australia soon after and the first truffles were found in Tasmania in 1999. Now there are more than 150 mostly small truffières in New Zealand, and approximatively 200-250 plantations in Australia some of which are very large. Most of the productive truffières have been established with Tuber melanosporum Vittad. infected plants but more recently fruiting bodies of Tuber borchii Vittad. and Tuber aestivum Vittad. have been harvested. Chile followed by Argentina and South Africa were the next to get involved and produced in 2009, 2014 and 2015 respectively. Over the past 10 years alternative techniques have been tried in Italy, China and New Zealand in attempts to control contaminating ectomycorrhizal fungi in the nursery – arguably the most important problem facing the cultivation of truffles worldwide.

Background: According to the European Patient Forum, patient empowerment is the process helping people gain control over their own lives, by increasing their ability to act on issues that they themselves regard as important. Methods based solely on clinical criteria (i.e. professional training and experience) or combined with rules-based approaches (i.e. thresholds for parameters triggering pre-established decisions) constitute most of current practice. In contrast, regular usage of predictive modelling tools for clinical decision support (establishing relationships between sets of variables and outcomes, through statistical or machine learning methods) and/or patient’s support through suitable recommendations or nudges is in its infancy, despite seemingly a natural step towards customization of care. Methods: In the CONNECARE project (ID: 689802), intelligence is delivered to patients and clinicians in the form of automated, contextual, and personalized data analysis and decision making, by dedicated ICT tools: the Recommender System (RS) and three Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS). The RS has two goals: (i) enabling patients’ awareness regarding their compliance to prescriptions, thus of the evolution of their condition (i.e. worsening adherence to treatment), and (ii) pursue engagement of patients during treatment, thus a more active role in the process (by sending personalized messages). The goal of the CDSS is threefold: (i) deliver to clinicians risk assessment and stratification services (CDSS-risk), so as to let them focus on the most critical cases, (ii) provide geolocation services (CDSS-map) to color patients on a map depending on severity of condition (e.g., according to Charlson risk index), and existence of socio-cognitive and economic barriers to treatment (i.e., anxiety, living alone, low incomes), while suggesting optimal routes for home visits and nearby, relevant medical facilities; and (iii) assist clinicians in designing personalized clinical pathways (CDSS-path), by suggesting “templates” of the process (in the form of a workflow) to be further specialized manually. Both tools operate by constantly monitoring patients’ data (i.e., latest clinical measurements, current prescriptions) – while respecting privacy concerns – so as to feed algorithms specifically conceived so as to balance the tradeoff between (i) scientific relevance (i.e. state-of-art techniques) and (ii) clinical acceptance (i.e. validation by domain experts). Results: The CONNECARE system is a federation of subsystems each providing goal-oriented functionalities, whose main components are the Self-Management System and the Smart Adaptive Case Management system. To be smart, adaptive, and personalized, they rely on the RS and CDSS, which are now being integrated in the next release of the system, already adopted in implementation studies started in May 2018 in Lleida, Israel, and Groningen. Conclusions: Approaches to increase patient empowerment vary from patient self-management programs, to promoting patient involvement in treatment decision-making, to facilitating the physician-patient cooperation. Under the umbrella of the CONNECARE project, we defined intelligent systems aimed at providing support to patients through a recommender system and to clinicians through a combination of three clinical decision support systems.

Supplementing pig diets with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) may produce meat products with an increased n-3 fatty acid content, and the combined antioxidants addition could prevent lipid oxidation in the feed. However, to date, the effects of these bioactive compounds at the molecular level in porcine skeletal muscle are mostly unknown. This study aimed to analyse changes in the Longissimus thoracis transcriptome of 35 pigs fed three diets supplemented with: linseed (L); linseed, vitamin E and Selenium (LES) or linseed and plant-derived polyphenols (LPE). Pigs were reared from 80.8 ± 5.6 kg to 151.8 ± 9.9 kg. After slaughter, RNA-Seq was performed and 1182 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were submitted to functional analysis. The L vs LES comparison did not show differences, while L vs LPE showed 1102 DEGs and LES vs LPE 80 DEGs. LPE compared to the other groups showed the highest number of up-regulated genes involved in preserving muscle metabolism and structure. Results enlighten that the combined supplementation of bioactive lipids (n-3 PUFA from linseed) with plant extracts as a source of polyphenols increases, compared to the only addition of linseed, the expression of genes involved in mRNA metabolic processes and transcriptional regulation, glucose uptake and, finally, in supporting muscle development and physiology. These results improve the knowledge of the biological effect of bioactive compounds in Longissimus thoracis muscle, and sustain the growing interest over their use in pig production.

In recent years, fungi have been recognized as producers of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors, agents important for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study aimed to examine the AChE inhibitory, the antioxidative and antibacterial activity of two different Schizophyllum commune strains that originated from Serbia (SRB) and Italy (IT). Submerged cultivation of grown mycelia (M) and fermentation broth (F) of ethanol (EtOH) and polysaccharide (PSH) extracts lasted for 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. For AChE activity Ellman method was performed, while for antioxidative activity, sevendifferent assays were conducted: DPPH, ABTS, FRAP, SOA, OH, NO together with total phenolic content. Antimicrobial screen, LC–MS/MS technique and FTIR measurements were performed. Different isolates exhibited different AChE activity, with PSH being the strongest (SRB, M, 28 days IC90 79.73 ± 26.34 µg/mL), while in EtOH extracts, IT stood out (F, 14 days, IC50 0.8 ± 0.6 µg/mL). PSH extracts (7 days) exhibit significant antioxidative activity (AO), opposite to EtOH extracts where 14 and 21days periods stood out. Only tw extracts showed antibacterial activity. Following LC–MS/MS analysis p-hydroxybenzoic and gallic acids were the most abundant phenolics. PSH extracts demonstrated remarkable results, making this study debut and introducing S. commune as a valuable resource of AChE inhibitors.

To date, high-throughput technology such as RNA-sequencing has been successfully applied in livestock sciences to investigate molecular networks involved in complex traits, such as meat quality. Pork quality depends on several organoleptic, technological, and nutritional characteristics, and it is also influenced by the fatty acid (FA) composition of intramuscular fat (IMF). To explore the molecular networks associated with different IMF FA compositions, the Semimembranosus muscle (SM) from two groups of Italian Large White (ILW) heavy pigs divergent for SM IMF content was investigated using transcriptome analysis. After alignment and normalization, the obtained gene counts were used to perform the Weighted Correlation Network Analysis (WGCNA package in R environment). Palmitic and palmitoleic contents showed association with the same gene modules, comprising genes significantly enriched in autophagy, mitochondrial fusion, and mitochondrial activity. Among the key genes related to these FAs, we found TEAD4, a gene regulating mitochondrial activity that seems to be a promising candidate for further studies. On the other hand, the genes comprised in the modules associated with the IMF contents of oleic, n-6, and n-3 polyunsaturated FAs (PUFAs) were significantly enriched in Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) signaling, in agreement with previous studies suggesting that several MAPK players may have a primary role in regulating lipid deposition. These results give an insight into the molecular cascade associated with different IMF FA composition in ILW heavy pigs. Further studies are needed to validate the results and confirm whether some of the identified key genes may be effective candidates for pork quality.

Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) dry-cured hams production is greatly dependent on raw meat quality. This study was performed to identify genetic markers associated with the quality of dry-cured ham. Carcass traits of 229 heavy pigs belonging to three commercial genetic lines were registered (weight, EUROP classification). Phenotypic traits (Semimembranosus muscle ultimate pH, ham weight and lean meat content, adsorbed salt) of the corresponding thighs, undergone PDO ham process in three different plants, were measured, using a fast and non-invasive technology. Green ham weight and lean meat percentage influenced the estimated salt content and the weight loss during salting, even if the processing plant greatly affected the variability of the measured ham traits. The genomic data were obtained with the GeneSeek Genomic Profiler (GGP) 70k HD Porcine Array, using the slaughter day and the sex of the animals in the statistical analyses. The phenotypic traits were associated with the genotypes through GenAbel software. The results showed that 18 SNPs located on nine porcine chromosomes were found to be associated with nine phenotypic traits, mainly related to ham weight loss during salting. New associations were found between markers in the genes Neural Precursor Cell Expressed Developmentally Down-Regulated 9 (NEDD9, SSC7), T-Cell Lymphoma Invasion and Metastasis 2 (TIAM2, SSC1), and the ham quality traits. After validation, these SNPs may be useful to improve the quality of thighs for the production of PDO dry-cured hams.