Alessandro Gaviraghi

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro | UFRJ · Instituto de Bioquímica Médica - UFRJ

Aedes aegypti females are natural vectors of important arboviruses such as dengue, zika, and yellow fever. Mosquitoes activate innate immune response signaling pathways upon infection, as a resistance mechanism to fight pathogens and limit their propagation. Despite the beneficial effects of immune activation for insect vectors, phenotypic costs ul...

Aedes aegypti females are natural vectors of important arboviruses such as Dengue, Zika, and yellow fever. Mosquitoes activate innate immune response signaling pathways upon infection, as a resistance mechanism to fight pathogens and limit their propagation. Despite the beneficial effects of immune activation for insect vectors, phenotypic costs ul...

Insect gut microbiota plays important roles in host physiology, such as nutrition, digestion, development, fertility, and immunity. We have found that in the intestine of Aedes aegypti , SLIMP (seryl-tRNA synthetase like insect mitochondrial protein) knockdown followed by a blood meal promotes dysbiosis, characterized by the overgrowth of a specifi...

Respirometry analysis is an effective technique to assess mitochondrial physiology. Insects are valuable biochemical models to understand metabolism and human diseases. Insect flight muscle and brain have been extensively used to explore mitochondrial function due to dissection feasibility and the low sample effort to allow oxygen consumption measu...

Flight dispersal represents a key aspect of the evolutionary and ecological success of insects, allowing escape from predators, mating, and colonization of new niches. The huge energy demand posed by flight activity is essentially met by oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) in flight muscle mitochondria. In insects, mitochondrial ATP supply and oxida...

The adult females of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are facultative hematophagous insects but they are unable to feed on blood right after pupae emergence. The maturation process that takes place during the first post-emergence days, hereafter named hematophagic and gonotrophic capacitation, comprises a set of molecular and physiological changes that pre...

Aedes aegypti adult females are key vectors of several arboviruses and flight activity plays a central role in mosquito biology and disease transmission. Available methods to quantify mosquito flight usually require special devices and mostly assess spontaneous locomotor activity at individual level. Here, we developed a new method to determine lon...

Aedes aegypti adult females are key vectors of several arboviruses and flight activity plays a central role in mosquito biology and disease transmission. Available methods to quantify mosquito flight usually require special devices and mostly assess spontaneous locomotor activity at individual level. Here, we developed a new method to determine lon...

The huge energy demand posed by insect flight activity is met by an efficient oxidative phosphorylation process that takes place within flight muscle mitochondria. In the major arbovirus vector Aedes aegypti, mitochondrial oxidation of pyruvate, proline and glycerol 3-phosphate (G3P) represent the major energy sources of ATP to sustain flight muscl...

The huge energy demand posed by insect flight activity is met by an efficient oxidative phosphorylation process that takes place within flight muscle mitochondria. In the major arbovirus vector Aedes aegypti, mitochondrial oxidation of pyruvate, proline and glycerol 3 phosphate (G3P) represent the major energy sources of ATP to sustain flight muscl...

Aedes aegypti is the most important and widespread vector of arboviruses, including dengue and zika. Insect dispersal through the flight activity is a key parameter that determines vector competence, and is energetically driven by oxidative phosphorylation in flight muscle mitochondria. Analysis of mitochondrial function is central for a better und...

Violence and aggression represent severe social problems, with profound impacts on public health. Despite the development of experimental models to study aggressive behavior is highly appreciated, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Given the key contribution of mitochondria to central nervous system bioenergetics, we hypothesized t...

The use of artificial insemination (AI) in buffalo is limited by the poor ovarian activity during the hot season, the seasonal qualitative patterns in semen, the low resistance of sperm cells in the female tract, the difficulties in detecting and variable length of estrous. Although AI procedures are commonly used in bovine breeding, these techniqu...

Adult females of Aedes aegypti are facultative blood sucking insects and vectors of Dengue and yellow fever viruses. Insect dispersal plays a central role in disease transmission and the extremely high energy demand posed by flight is accomplished by a very efficient oxidative phosphorylation process, which take place within flight muscle mitochond...

In this study a field trial was conducted to evaluate the main factors affecting the fertility in Holstein Friesian cows (heifers and pluriparous) inseminated with sexed semen. Semen was collected from ten bulls housed in three semen production centers and the sex-sorting was carried out by two companies according to Belstville Sperm Sorting Techno...

In buffaloes, AI with sexed semen is not fully optimized, and the procedure has only been performed using the approach currently in use for cattle. The objective of the present work was to compare the pregnancy rates in Mediterranean Italian buffalo cows inseminated with sexed frozen-thawed semen at 2, 4, 6, and 8 million sperm per dose, using the...

In the last few decades a negative association between the level of milk production and fertility has been observed. Currently, the most utilized method of measuring male fertility employed by the livestock industry is related to the Non-Return Rate (NRR). Through differential proteome analysis, this study evaluated changes in the expression of the...

A large individual variability among stallions and extenders with respect to the freezability of their ejaculates has been frequently reported. This work was aimed at evaluating the freezability of different ejaculates of 23 stallions extended in two commercial extenders. Three ejaculates from each of 23 fertile stallions housed at “Centro di Incre...

Cooled shipped semen is commonly used in equine reproduction; however, high variability in fertility among stallions is frequently reported. Several factors, including seminal plasma, can affect spermatozoa viability by altering the integrity of sperm membrane and DNA. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of 50% (v/v) seminal plasma on s...

In Mediterranean countries artificial insemination (A.I.) in sheep is usually performed using cervical insemination with ram semen diluted in milk based extender and stored at 15°C due to its simplicity and satisfactory results. The fertility of ewes after A.I. is affected by many factors such as intervals between lambing, season, age of ewe, heat st...

Breeding of dairy cattle for high production and the reproductive management of herd is the biggest problem and it accounts for a large part on costs of production. A negative association has been observed between the level of livestock production and fertility. This is linked both to genetic factors (inbreeding and high production) and physiologic...

Drug resistance in food-borne bacterial pathogens is an almost inevitable consequence of the use of antimicrobial drugs, used either therapeutically or to avoid infections in food-producing animals. In the past decades, the spread and inappropriate use of antibiotics have caused a considerable increase of antibiotics to which bacteria have develope...

Summering on alpine pastures from June to October has long been the traditional management of goat flocks in the mountain areas of Lombardy. At present most of the 50.000 goats farmed in Lombardy are still summered, even though only a few thousands - belonging to local breed - are regularly milked. For these goats summering appears to be fundamenta...

In dairy cattle breeding, herd reproductive management is the primary focus, affecting a large part of the general costs. A negative association was observed between the level of milk production and fertility. Some studies have shown that a significant percentage of reproductive failure is attributable to semen quality; therefore, if reproduction m...

The aim of this work was to determine the slaughter performance and some chemical and physical characteristics of dairy does whose thighs were used to make the traditional ham called violino and of chevons. Moreover, the aptitude to produce the violino by chevons slaughtered at the age of one year was assessed. The rate of animals suitable to produ...

Escherichia Coli is a Gram negative bacterium, widely studied because it represents an integrating part of the human enteric flora, even if various strains are pathogen. Moreover, such strains are zoonotic agents and they can be isolate also in ruminants in which cause diarrhea and edema. Human infection occurs via fecal-oral pathway and animals ar...

The transition period of goats is often characterized by serious metabolic problems, mainly before parturition. These troubles are related to negative energy balance status, however all causes are not totally defined. To improve the knowledge about pathogenesis in this phase we have monitored the changes of some blood indices of lipomobilization an...

Morphometric measurements of 46 individuals belonging to Frisa Valtellinese e Saanen breed were evaluated and carried out by both traditional tools and opto-informatic system. Differences in the values accounted for 1%, and were never determined to be over 4%. Correlations of measures obtained by the two different systems gave a value of 0.97 (P<0....

The importance of goat milk in infant diet is growing, because it is reported that goat's milk in some cases is less allergenic than cow's milk. This is due probably to the lower presence of caseins associated with a specific type of alpha(s1)-casein. In caprine breeds, four types of alpha(s1)-casein alleles are identified and associated with vario...

Riassunto Una selezione di formaggi caprini tipo "caprino fresco" e "caciotta" è stata sottoposta al giudizio dei consumatori utilizzando una scala edonistica a 9 punti. Sono state raccolte e sottoposte a test di indipendenza del χ 2 201 schede di giudizio. Ciò ha permesso di tracciare un profilo anagrafico dei consumatori, di indagare le loro abit...

Viale Giovanni XXIII, 7 -26900 Lodi E' noto come, a partire dagli anni cinquanta, l'abbandono della pratica alpicolturale è un fenomeno comune all'intero arco alpino (Gios et De Ros, 1991; Tappeiner et Cernusca, 1993). Nel territorio delle alpi lombarde, la recessione segna il picco massimo negli anni sessanta e settanta, in particolare nel quinque...