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In today’s society, several factors have influenced and changed the pattern of reading. The main are: digital literacy, availability and easy access to a multitude of web contents. The act of reading has now a new role more central than... more
In today’s society, several factors have influenced and changed the pattern of reading. The main are: digital literacy, availability and easy access to a multitude of web contents. The act of reading has now a new role more central than before, because all the new learning opportunities depend on a personal ability to read. Therefore, for several school systems the 21 st Century education must put a greater emphasis on the learning of skills over the learning of content because information is constantly changing. Nowadays literacy education includes, in addition to the ability of reading, also other skills such as listening, writing, reading comprehension and argumentation. Literacy is also the basis for analysis and critical thinking. Despite the importance of literacy in today’s society and the high schooling rate reached in Europe, there are people who still experience difficulties with reading as demonstrated by the latest OCSE PISA surveys. To encourage the education of new cap...
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Most of the 26 viruses that infect globe artichoke are detrimental to the crop’s production, quality, and nutritional value, hamper the development of a nursery activity in the respect of current EU legislation and pose risks for the new... more
Most of the 26 viruses that infect globe artichoke are detrimental to the crop’s production, quality, and nutritional value, hamper the development of a nursery activity in the respect of current EU legislation and pose risks for the new plantings. Worldwide movement of virus-controlled plant propagative material require fast, accurate and feasible methods to guarantee reliable results and detection of multiple viruses in a single assay to reduce time and costs in routine tests. Here we describe the use of a digoxigenin-labelled polyprobe assembled from synthetic 50 nt single-stranded DNA sequences derived from genomes of the most commonly occurring viruses in globe artichoke. These included artichoke Italian latent virus (AILV), artichoke latent virus (ArLV), artichoke mottled crinkle virus (AMCV), turnip mosaic virus (TuMV), tomato infectious chlorosis virus (TICV), bean yellow mosaic virus (BYMV), cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), pelargonium zonate spot virus (PZSV), tomato spotted w...
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Research Interests: Biology and Certification
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Grafting is routinely implemented in modern agriculture to manage soilborne pathogens such as fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, and viruses of solanaceous crops in a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach. Some rootstock/scion... more
Grafting is routinely implemented in modern agriculture to manage soilborne pathogens such as fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, and viruses of solanaceous crops in a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach. Some rootstock/scion combinations use specific genetic resistance mechanisms to impact also some foliar and airborne pathogens, including arthropod or contact-transmitted viruses. These approaches resulted in poor efficiency in the management of plant viruses with superior virulence such as the strains of tomato spotted wilt virus breaking the Sw5 resistance, strains of cucumber mosaic virus carrying necrogenic satellite RNAs, and necrogenic strains of potato virus Y. Three different studies from our lab documented that suitable levels of resistance/tolerance can be obtained by grafting commercial tomato varieties onto the tomato ecotype Manduria (Ma) rescued in the framework of an Apulian (southern Italy) regional program on biodiversity. Here we review the main approaches, ...
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Grafting of commercial tomato varieties and hybrids on the tomato ecotype Manduria resulted in high levels of tolerance to the infection of Sw5 resistance-breaking strains of tomato spotted wilt virus and of severe cucumber mosaic virus... more
Grafting of commercial tomato varieties and hybrids on the tomato ecotype Manduria resulted in high levels of tolerance to the infection of Sw5 resistance-breaking strains of tomato spotted wilt virus and of severe cucumber mosaic virus strains supporting hypervirulent satellite RNAs that co-determine stunting and necrotic phenotypes in tomato. To decipher the basis of such tolerance, here we used a RNAseq analysis to study the transcriptome profiles of the Manduria ecotype and of the susceptible variety UC82, and of their graft combinations, exposed or not to infection of the potato virus Y recombinant strain PVYC-to. The analysis identified graft- and virus-responsive mRNAs differentially expressed in UC82 and Manduria, which led to an overall suitable level of tolerance to viral infection confirmed by the appearance of a recovery phenotype in Manduria and in all graft combinations. The transcriptome analysis suggested that graft wounding and viral infection had diverging effects ...
Research Interests: Biology and Transcriptome
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RNA silencing controls endogenous gene expression and drives defensive reactions against invasive nucleic acids like viruses. In plants, it has been demonstrated that RNA silencing can be transmitted through grafting between scions and... more
RNA silencing controls endogenous gene expression and drives defensive reactions against invasive nucleic acids like viruses. In plants, it has been demonstrated that RNA silencing can be transmitted through grafting between scions and silenced rootstocks to attenuate virus and viroid accumulation in the scions. This has been obtained mostly using transgenic plants, which may be a drawback in current agriculture. In the present study, we examined the dynamics of infection of a resistance-breaking strain of Tomato spotted wilt virus (RB-TSWV) through the graft between an old Apulian (southern Italy) tomato variety, denoted Sl-Ma, used as a rootstock and commercial tomato varieties used as scions. In tests with non-grafted plants, Sl-Ma showed resistance to the RB-TSWV infection as viral RNA accumulated at low levels and plants recovered from disease symptoms by 21 days post inoculation. The resistance trait was transmitted to the otherwise highly susceptible tomato genotypes grafted ...
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We have shown that in tobacco plants Artichoke Italian latent virus (AILV) is unable to interfere with plant defence response based on RNA silencing (RNAi). As a result, plants recover from disease symptoms between 21 and 28 days post... more
We have shown that in tobacco plants Artichoke Italian latent virus (AILV) is unable to interfere with plant defence response based on RNA silencing (RNAi). As a result, plants recover from disease symptoms between 21 and 28 days post inoculation but symptomless leaves still contain infectious virus particles.
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Complete genomic sequences of Artichoke latent virus (ArLV) have been obtained by classical or high-throughput sequencing for an ArLV isolate from Italy (ITBr05) and for two isolates from France (FR37 and FR50). The genome is 8,278 to... more
Complete genomic sequences of Artichoke latent virus (ArLV) have been obtained by classical or high-throughput sequencing for an ArLV isolate from Italy (ITBr05) and for two isolates from France (FR37 and FR50). The genome is 8,278 to 8,291 nucleotides long and has a genomic organization comparable with that of Chinese yam necrotic mosaic virus (CYNMV), the only macluravirus fully sequenced to date. The cleavage sites of the viral polyprotein have been tentatively identified by comparison with CYNMV, confirming that macluraviruses are characterized by the absence of a P1 protein, a shorter and N-terminally truncated coat protein (CP). Sequence comparisons firmly place ArLV within the genus Macluravirus, and confirm previous results suggesting that Ranunculus latent virus (RALV), a previously described Macluravirus sp., is very closely related to ArLV. Serological relationships and comparisons of the CP gene and of the partial RaLV sequence available all indicate that RaLV should not...
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Si riferisce sui risultati di una indagine condotta su piante di gerbera coltivate nel Nord barese ed in Provincia di Lecce interessate, rispettivamente, da estese necrosi delle foglie, degli steli e dei fiori e da virescenza e fillodia a... more
Si riferisce sui risultati di una indagine condotta su piante di gerbera coltivate nel Nord barese ed in Provincia di Lecce interessate, rispettivamente, da estese necrosi delle foglie, degli steli e dei fiori e da virescenza e fillodia a carico dei soli fiori. L'agente causale dei sintomi necrotici è stato identificato in un ceppo 'resistance breaking' (RB) di Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) mentre nel caso della virescenza e fillodia dei fiori la malattia è stata associata alla presenza di 'Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris'. Entrambi i patogeni sono stati già segnalati sulle coltivazioni di gerbera presenti in altre regioni italiane ma questa è la prima segnalazione della presenza di un ceppo RB di TSWV e la prima segnalazione pugliese della presenza del fitoplasma sulla ornamentale. Viene nuovamente sottolineata l'importanza del ritrovamento dei ceppi RB di TSWV anche nei confronti di colture orticole e sono fornite indicazioni sulla eco-epidemiologia delle...
Most of the 25 viruses found in globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus L.) and cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L.) were recorded from Europe and the Mediterranean basin, where they decrease both the productivity and the quality of the crop.... more
Most of the 25 viruses found in globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus L.) and cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L.) were recorded from Europe and the Mediterranean basin, where they decrease both the productivity and the quality of the crop. Although, sometimes, these viruses are agents of diseases of different severity, most often their infections are symptomless. These conditions have contributed to spread virus-infected material since farmers multiply traditional artichoke types vegetatively with no effective selection of virus-free plants. This review reports the main properties of these viruses and the techniques used for their detection and identification. ELISA kits are commercially available for most of the viruses addressed in this review but have seldom been used for their detection in artichoke. Conversely, nucleic acid-based diagnostic reagents, some of which are commercially available, have successfully been employed to identify some viruses in artichoke sap. Control measures mainly use virus-free stocks for new plantations. A combined procedure of meristem-tip culture and thermotherapy proved useful for producing virus-free regenerants of the reflowering southern Italian cultivar Brindisino, which kept earliness and typical heads shape.
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Significance RNAi is used to elucidate gene functions also in phytopathogenic fungi, where it is expressed by hairpin RNAs delivered through plasmids, sequences integrated in fungal or plant genomes, or by RNAi generated in planta by a... more
Significance RNAi is used to elucidate gene functions also in phytopathogenic fungi, where it is expressed by hairpin RNAs delivered through plasmids, sequences integrated in fungal or plant genomes, or by RNAi generated in planta by a plant virus infection. These approaches have drawbacks ranging from instability of hairpin constructs to difficulties in preparing and handling transgenic plants to silence homologous sequences in fungi grown on these plants. Here we show that RNAi can be expressed in phytopathogenic fungi by direct transfection with a plant virus-based vector and that the approach also can be used to obtain foreign protein expression in fungi. This technique could find wider application for functional genomics in filamentous fungi of biomedical and phytopathological interest.
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Viral infections interfere with the microRNA (miRNA)-mediated regulation of gene expression, determining developmental defects. In tomato leaves, the accumulation levels of six miRNA species and their target transcripts corresponding to... more
Viral infections interfere with the microRNA (miRNA)-mediated regulation of gene expression, determining developmental defects. In tomato leaves, the accumulation levels of six miRNA species and their target transcripts corresponding to transcription factors with roles in plant development and leaf morphogenesis and two genes involved in the short RNA processing, DCL1 and AGO1, were significantly enhanced upon infection with the severe strain Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV)-Fny, while that of AGO4 was reduced. In plants harboring the infection of the mild strain CMV-LS, the effects on miRNA pathway were reduced, although AGO1, DCL1, and NAC1 also were shown to overaccumulate during infections exhibiting a mild phenotype. The use of the recombinant strain CMV-Fny(LS2b), in which the 3′-terminal region of CMV-Fny RNA 2, including the 2b coding sequence, was replaced with the corresponding region of CMV-LS RNA 2, provided evidence that the exchanged region was implicated in the perturbatio...