91. How to react to the necessity of a sustainable animal production? The EcoLamb projectTanja Peric, Martina Bergant Marušič, Ario De Marco, Petra Makorič, Sinan Ogun, 2018, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: EcoLamb assesses the sustainability of diverse European sheep production systems focusing on the ecological footprint, animal welfare aspects and nutrition value of lamb meat. The outcomes of these assessments will be used to understand the potential future barriers that limit the innovative capacity and development of the sector and the opportunities that may provide a future market niche against competitive products from other global markets. Farm solutions that incorporate consumer expectations for animal welfare and meat quality will enhance the competitiveness of Europe's lamb meat sector. The project engages trans-national research and industry stakeholders from 6 countries made up of Germany, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey to analyse on 20 case study farms resource-efficient, competitive and low-carbon lamb production models. Direct linkage between animal welfare, meat quality and pharmaceutical use will also be determined using innovative Precision Farming techniques. The project will produce a tool-box of recommendations for productive sheep farm management, supply chain and marketing on how to improve the acceptability of lamb meat by consumers. Thus, the multidisciplinary approach and the multi-actor involvement of the EU sheep sector will assist in re-designing critical aspects to increase society acceptance and the place of lamb meat in future diets and the outcomes of the project will be used by stakeholders to promote changes in farm management, marketing and processing of meat from sheep. Additionally, results will be used by farm consultants, farmer groups and policy officers to re-design consulting approaches and plan new initiatives to make all aspects of the European sheep industry more sustainable.
Keywords: sustainable, animal production, lamb, sheep, Jezersko-Solčavska, EcoLamb
Published in RUNG: 05.09.2018; Views: 3775; Downloads: 0
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92. Urinary Extracellular Vesicle Biomarkers in Urological Cancers: From Discovery Towards Clinical ImplementationBert Dhondt, Jan Van Deun, Silke Vermaerke, Ario De Marco, Nicolaas Lumen, Olivier De Wever, An Hendrix, 2018, review article Keywords: Extracellular vesicles, cancer biomarkers, diagnostics
Published in RUNG: 04.05.2018; Views: 4016; Downloads: 0
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93. Nanobodies: towards rational design of immune-reagentsArio De Marco, 2017, published scientific conference contribution abstract (invited lecture) Abstract: Antibodies are irreplaceable reagents in both research and clinical practice. Despite their relevance, the structural complexity of conventional mono- and polyclonal antibodies (IgG) has always been a limit for their engineering towards reagents optimized for specific applications, such as in vivo diagnostics and therapy. Furthermore, their isolation is time consuming, their production expensive, and their functionalization results often in heterogeneous macromolecule populations. These drawbacks promoted the search for both innovative antibody isolation strategies and alternative scaffolds. In vitro panning of pre-immune collections of recombinant antibody fragments allows for the simple and fast recovery of binders. Since they did not undergo somatic maturation, their affinity for targets can be insufficient but on the other hand they can be rapidly mutated by standard molecular biology techniques to generate second-generation antibodies among which to identify clones with improved characteristics. Both stochastic and rational methods have been proposed for the optimization process. Random mutagenesis followed by panning at stringent conditions has been successful used to select binders with improved physical characteristics. Rational methods try to identify in silico key residues involved in the regulation of specific antibody features, such as stability or binding affinity. The accuracy of these methods usually depends on the calculation resources. In this perspective, smaller molecules can be analyzed “better” than larger because of their restricted number of residues. Nanobodies small dimensions have been long appreciated since enable better tissue penetration, shorter clearance time, higher yields. Now it becomes evident that this characteristic makes them also optimal objects for modeling.
Keywords: recombinant antibody modeling, nanobody engineering, molecular dynamics and docking
Published in RUNG: 21.03.2018; Views: 4614; Downloads: 0
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