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L'articolo ricostruisce le serie storiche annuali dei principali aggregati monetari per l'Italia. Estende la letteratura esistente considerando un arco di tempo più lungo (che copre l'unità nazionale fino al 2014) e una disaggregazione più dettagliata, oltre a migliorare la qualità delle serie per il periodo precedente. Infine, le nuove serie sono utilizzate per stimare le determinanti a lungo termine della domanda di moneta. The article reconstructs yearly time series of the main monetary aggregates for Italy. It extends extant literature by considering a longer time span (covering from national unity to 2014) and more detailed disaggregation, as well as improve the quality of the series for the older period. Finally, the new series are used to estimate the long-run determinants of money demand. JEL Classification: E51, E52, G21, N10

Cervical septic arthritis can lead to complications such as epidural abscess, which may result in respiratory failure. We present a case of a 78-year-old male with cervical septic arthritis complicated by epidural abscess, leading to severe diaphragm dysfunction. Ultrasound evaluation revealed dysfunction of the left hemidiaphragm and compensatory activation of accessory respiratory muscles. Treatment included antibiotic therapy and corticosteroids, alongside respiratory support. After 21 days, improvements were observed in diaphragmatic function and respiratory muscle activation. Our findings highlight the importance of assessing both diaphragm and accessory respiratory muscles in cases of cervical septic arthritis with respiratory complications.

The soil is vital for life on Earth and its biodiversity. However, being a non-renewable and threatened resource, preserving soil quality is crucial to maintain a range of ecosystem services critical to ecological balances, food production and human health. In an agricultural context, soil quality is often perceived as the ability to support field production, and thus soil quality and fertility are strictly interconnected. The concept of, as well as the ways to assess, soil fertility has undergone big changes over the years. Crop performance has been historically used as an indicator for soil quality and fertility. Then, analysis of a range of physico-chemical parameters has been used to routinely assess soil quality. Today it is becoming evident that soil quality must be evaluated by combining parameters that refer both to the physico-chemical and the biological levels. However, it can be challenging to find adequate indexes for evaluating soil quality that are both predictive and easy to measure in situ. An ideal soil quality assessment method should be flexible, sensitive enough to detect changes in soil functions, management and climate, and should allow comparability among sites. In this review, we discuss the current status of soil quality indicators and existing databases of harmonized, open-access topsoil data. We also explore the connections between soil biotic and abiotic features and crop performance in an agricultural context. Finally, based on current knowledge and technical advancements, we argue that the use of plant health traits represents a powerful way to assess soil physico-chemical and biological properties. These plant health parameters can serve as proxies for different soil features that characterize soil quality both at the physico-chemical and at the microbiological level, including soil quality, fertility and composition of soil microbial communities.

Abstract Traditionally, the most popular sentences used to describe the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis sound like: “AM fungi form one of the most widespread root symbioses, associating with 80% of land plants. In this symbiosis, the fungus provides the plant host with mineral nutrients, especially phosphate, receiving in turn carbohydrates.” In the last years, the mycorrhiza research field has witnessed a big step forward in the knowledge of the physiology and the mechanisms governing this important symbiosis, that helped plants colonizing the lands more than 400 MYA. The huge expansion of the -omics studies produced the first results on the fungal side, with genomes and transcriptomes of AM fungi being published. In parallel, the need for more sustainable agricultural practices has boosted the research in the field of the plant symbioses, with the final aim of improving plant productivity employing symbiotic microbes as bioinoculants. Beside all the other (positive) effects that mycorrhizal fungi exert on plants, the nutrient exchange is considered as the keystone, and the core mechanism governing this symbiosis. This review will focus on the molecular determinants underneath this exchange, both on the fungal and the plant side. Coming back to the sentence that claims this symbiosis as based on phosphate provided to the plant in return to carbohydrate, we will find that some concepts of this view still stand, while some others have been partly revolutionized.

As obligate biotrophic symbionts, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) live in association with most land plants. Among them, Gigaspora margarita has been deeply investigated because of its peculiar features, i.e., the presence of an intracellular microbiota with endobacteria and viruses. The genome sequencing of this fungus revealed the presence of some hybrid non-ribosomal peptide synthases-polyketide synthases (NRPS-PKS) that have been rarely identified in AMF. The aim of this study is to describe the architecture of these NRPS-PKS sequences and to understand whether they are present in other fungal taxa related to G. margarita. A phylogenetic analysis shows that the ketoacyl synthase (KS) domain of one G. margarita NRPS-PKS clusters with prokaryotic sequences. Since horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has often been advocated as a relevant evolutionary mechanism for the spread of secondary metabolite genes, we hypothesized that a similar event could have interested the KS domain of the PKS module. The bacterial endosymbiont of G. margarita, Candidatus Glomeribacter gigasporarum (CaGg), was the first candidate as a donor, since it possesses a large biosynthetic cluster involving an NRPS-PKS. However, bioinformatics analyses do not confirm the hypothesis of a direct HGT from the endobacterium to the fungal host: indeed, endobacterial and fungal sequences show a different evolution and potentially different donors. Lastly, by amplifying a NRPS-PKS conserved fragment and mining the sequenced AMF genomes, we demonstrate that, irrespective of the presence of CaGg, G. margarita, and some other related Gigasporaceae possess such a sequence.

Climate changes include the intensification of drought in many parts of the world, increasing its frequency, severity and duration. However, under natural conditions, environmental stresses do not occur alone, and, in addition, more stressed plants may become more susceptible to attacks by pests and pathogens. Studies on the impact of the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis on tomato response to water deficit showed that several drought-responsive genes are differentially regulated in AM-colonized tomato plants (roots and leaves) during water deficit. To date, global changes in mycorrhizal tomato root transcripts under water stress conditions have not been yet investigated. Here, changes in root transcriptome in the presence of an AM fungus, with or without water stress (WS) application, have been evaluated in a commercial tomato cultivar already investigated for the water stress response during AM symbiosis. Since root-knot nematodes (RKNs, Meloidogyne incognita) are obligate endoparasites and cause severe yield losses in tomato, the impact of the AM fungal colonization on RKN infection at 7 days post-inoculation was also evaluated. Results offer new information about the response to AM symbiosis, highlighting a functional redundancy for several tomato gene families, as well as on the tomato and fungal genes involved in WS response during symbiosis, underlying the role of the AM fungus. Changes in the expression of tomato genes related to nematode infection during AM symbiosis highlight a role of AM colonization in triggering defense responses against RKN in tomato. Overall, new datasets on the tomato response to an abiotic and biotic stress during AM symbiosis have been obtained, providing useful data for further researches.

The arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AM) Gigaspora margarita consistently hosts bacteria, named ‘Candidatus Glomeribacter gigasporarum,’ inside its cytoplasm. Endobacteria have a positive impact on fungal fitness during the presymbiotic phase, prior to plant roots colonization. We tested the hypothesis that the endobacterium and its cell divisions depend on fungal metabolism, mirroring also the events of the fungal life cycle which are influenced by plant signals. We first cloned a fragment of ftsZ, a marker gene for bacterial division, and then analyzed its expression along the different stages of fungus development. The bacterial gene transcripts showed the highest values when the fungus was associated to the plant, and peaked in the extraradical mycelium. Strigolactones, which are known to stimulate the AM fungal growth, caused a significant transcript increase in the germinated spores in the absence of the plant. The quantitative real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction data were strengthened by the quantification of the dividing bacteria, which were increasing in number in germinating spores after the strigolactone treatment. The bioactive molecule alone did not cause any change in the number of bacteria after their isolation from the fungus, thus showing that the strigolactone alone cannot confer free-living capacities to the bacterium.