Claudio Cucini

University of Siena | UNISI · Department of Life Sciences

Plastic pollution is a significant environmental challenge of contemporary age. Polystyrene (PS), among the most commonly used plastic polymers worldwide, is highly durable and difficult to degrade. Despite various disposal strategies, PS continues to impact biodiversity, human health, and ecosystems. Recently, the scientific community has focused...

The complete mitochondrial genome of the shining leaf chafer Mimela junii was sequenced and is herein described. The mitogenome consists of a circular molecule of 16,805 bp, with an overall AT content of 75.7%. It encodes for 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs) and contains a non-coding Con...

Background SmithRNAs (Small MITochondrial Highly-transcribed RNAs) are a novel class of small RNA molecules that are encoded in the mitochondrial genome and regulate the expression of nuclear transcripts. Initial evidence for their existence came from the Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum, where they have been described and whose activity has bee...

Secondary structures have long been held to carry significant phylogenetic information, but the difficulty in collating primary sequence and structural information has frequently hindered its full application in phylogenetic studies. Here, we focus on the implementation of secondary structure information (inner, outer and transmembrane regions) to...

The Japanese beetle Popillia japonica is a pest insect that feeds on hundreds of species of wild and cultivated plants including important fruit, vegetable, and field crops. Native to Japan, the pest has invaded large areas of the USA, Canada, the Azores (Portugal), Italy, and Ticino (Switzerland), and it is considered a priority for control in the...

Background The spread of Popillia japonica in non-native areas (USA, Canada, the Azores islands, Italy and Switzerland) poses a significant threat to agriculture and horticulture, as well as to endemic floral biodiversity, entailing that appropriate control measures must be taken to reduce its density and limit its further spread. In this context,...

The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade is an intracellular signaling pathway involved in the regulation of proliferation and survival of melanoma cells. Several different mutations, involving BRAF or NRAS, exert an oncogenic effect by activating the MAPK pathway, resulting in a further increase in cellular proliferation. MEK inhibitor...

The gut microbiome can play a fundamental role in several processes associated with an organism’s ecology, and research on the microbiota of wild animals has flourished in the last decades. Microbiome composition can vary across and within species according to taxonomy and environmental variability, including the availability of food resources. Spe...

Background The group XIV of C-type lectin domain-containing proteins (CTLDcps) is one of the seventeen groups of CTLDcps discovered in mammals and composed by four members: CD93, Clec14A, CD248 and Thrombomodulin, which have shown to be important players in cancer and vascular biology. Although these proteins belong to the same family, their phylog...

Plastic pollution has become a serious issue of global concern, and biodegradation of plastic wastes is representing one attractive environment-friendly alternative to traditional disposal paths. It is known that insects are involved in the plastic polymer degradation process, with reported evidence of tenebrionid beetle larvae capable to degrade p...

The temperature experienced by micro-invertebrates in extreme environments (such as those of Antarctica) is a pivotal parameter regarding these animals' ecology and physiology. However, at present, detailed knowledge of microhabitat physical conditions in Antarctica is limited, as well as being biased towards sub-Antarctic and Maritime Antarctic re...

We describe and delimit with integrative taxonomy the new springtail species Desoria calderonis sp. nov. (Collembola: Isotomidae). This cryophilic species is strictly linked to the supraglacial stony debris of the isolated Calderone glacier (Central Apennines, Italy), one of the southernmost glaciers of Europe. Desoria calderonis sp. nov. could bel...

We describe in this paper the morphology of the male reproductive system, the spermiogenesis and the sperm ultrastructure of the drugstore beetle S. paniceum (L) (Coleoptera, Ptinidae). The male reproductive apparatus has a pair of long testes with six follicles, filled with cysts, each containing 128 germ cells. The sperm is about 480 μm long and...

The complete mitochondrial genome of the true bug (Homoptera) Nysius cymoides (Spinola, 1837) is herein described and used for phylogenetic comparison with other species of Lygaeoidea. The mtDNA has a gene order and other molecular features typically observed in hexapods, and a long A + T-rich region, due to the occurrence of several repeat units....

The complete mitochondrial genome of the true bug (Homoptera) Nysius cymoides (Spinola, 1837) is herein described and used for phylogenetic comparison with other species of Lygaeoidea. The mtDNA has a gene order and other molecular features typically observed in hexapods, and a long AþT-rich region, due to the occurrence of several repeat units. Th...

The samurai wasp Trissolcus japonicus (Ashmead, 1904) is a parasitoid hymenopteran that came into the limelight as the natural enemy of Halyomorpha halys. Here, we present the complete sequence of the mitochondrial genome of the CREATJ laboratory strain, naturally recovered in Italy in 2018. The molecule conforms to the typical model of animal mito...

Global human activities, such as greenhouse emissions and pollution, are promoting global warming, environmental changes and biodiversity reduction. Pristine environments such as those of Antarctica are not immune to these phenomena, as is noticeable from the increasing pace of the temperature shift registered within the continent in recent decades...

Complete mitochondrial genome data are frequently applied to address phylogenetic/phylogeographic issues at different taxonomic levels in ecology and evolution. While sample preparation/sequencing is becoming more and more straightforward thanks to dropping costs for next-generation sequencing (NGS), data preparation and visualization remains a man...

Collembola are a key component of the soil biota globally, playing an important role in community and ecosystem dynamics. Equally significant are their associated microbiomes, that can contribute to key metabolic functions. In the present study, we investigated the bacterial community composition of four Antarctic springtail species to assess if an...

The silverfish Neoasterolepisma foreli belongs to the family Lepismatidae within Zygentoma and is well known for the peculiar habit of living in strict association with ant nests (myrmecophily). In this study, we describe its mitochondrial genome, a circular molecule of 15,398 bp including the canonical 13 PCGs, 22 tRNAs, 2 rRNAs, as well as a 403...

Collembola are an ancient and early diverging lineage of basal hexapods that occur in virtually all terrestrial habitats on Earth. Phylogenetic relationships between the different orders of Collembola are fiercely debated. Despite a range of studies and the application of both morphological and genetic approaches (singly or in combination) to asses...

Springtails and mites are the dominant groups of terrestrial arthropods in Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems. Their Antarctic diversity includes a limited number of species, which are frequently endemic to specific regions within the continent. Advances in molecular techniques, combined with the re-evaluation of morphological characters and the avai...

The use of plastics burgeoned in the last decades to become an essential component of our society. An environment friendly method to dispose of plastic waste is not available yet, to the outcome that these accumulate in landfills or are scattered as microplastics. New researches reported that some coleopteran species are able to destroy plastics th...

Symphypleona (sensu stricto) are a group of Collembola (=springtails) that, despite displaying some variation in gene order, have been poorly investigated under the phylomitogenomic perspective. How families and subfamilies of this taxon are evolutionary related is still partially unknown. For this reason we sequenced, and herein described, the com...

The complete mitochondrial genome of the springtail Bourletiella arvalis (Fitch, 1863) is herein described and applied to a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, inclusive of all the Collembola mitochondrial DNAs sequenced so far. The gene content and order, as well as the nucleotide composition, conform with the well-known features of hexapods’ mitochon...

The complete mitochondrial genome of the machilid Trigoniophthalmus alternatus (Silvestri 1904) is herein described and applied to phylogenetic analyses, inclusive of the most early-divergent lineages of hexapods. Both gene content and order generally conform with the organization of the arthropods’ mitochondrial genome. One gene translocation invo...

Protozoa, of the taxon Gregarinasina, are a heterogeneous group of Apicomplexa that includes ~1600 species. They are parasites of a large variety of both marine and terrestrial invertebrates, mainly annelids, arthropods and mollusks. Unlike coccidians and heamosporidians, gregarines have not proven to have a negative effect on human welfare; thus,...