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Di Paola R, Modafferi S, Siracusa R, Cordaro M, D’Amico R, Ontario ML, Interdonato L, Salinaro AT, Fusco R, Impellizzeri D, Calabrese V, Cuzzocrea S. S-Acetyl-Glutathione Attenuates Carbon Tetrachloride-Induced Liver Injury by Modulating Oxidative Imbalance and Inflammation. Int J Mol Sci 2022; 23:ijms23084429. [PMID: 35457246 PMCID: PMC9024626 DOI: 10.3390/ijms23084429] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2022] [Revised: 04/14/2022] [Accepted: 04/15/2022] [Indexed: 01/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Liver fibrosis, depending on the stage of the disease, could lead to organ dysfunction and cirrhosis, and no effective treatment is actually available. Emergent proof supports a link between oxidative stress, liver fibrogenesis and mitochondrial dysfunction as molecular bases of the pathology. A valid approach to protect against the disease would be to replenish the endogenous antioxidants; thus, we investigated the protective mechanisms of the S-acetyl-glutathione (SAG), a glutathione (GSH) prodrug. Preliminary in vitro analyses were conducted on primary hepatic cells. SAG pre-treatment significantly protected against cytotoxicity induced by CCl4. Additionally, CCl4 induced a marked increase in AST and ALT levels, whereas SAG significantly reduced these levels, reaching values found in the control group. For the in vivo analyses, mice were administered twice a week with eight consecutive intraperitoneal injections of 1 mL/kg CCl4 (diluted at 1:10 in olive oil) to induce oxidative imbalance and liver inflammation. SAG (30 mg/kg) was administered orally for 8 weeks. SAG significantly restored SOD activity, GSH levels and GPx activity, while it strongly reduced GSSG levels, lipid peroxidation and H2O2 and ROS levels in the liver. Additionally, CCl4 induced a decrease in anti-oxidants, including Nrf2, HO-1 and NQO-1, which were restored by treatment with SAG. The increased oxidative stress characteristic on liver disfunction causes the impairment of mitophagy and accumulation of dysfunctional and damaged mitochondria. Our results showed the protective effect of SAG administration in restoring mitophagy, as shown by the increased PINK1 and Parkin expressions in livers exposed to CCl4 intoxication. Thus, the SAG administration showed anti-inflammatory effects decreasing pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α, IL-6, MCP-1 and IL-1β in both serum and liver, and suppressing the TLR4/NFkB pathway. SAG attenuated reduced fibrosis, collagen deposition, hepatocellular damage and organ dysfunction. In conclusion, our results suggest that SAG administration protects the liver from CCl4 intoxication by restoring the oxidative balance, ameliorating the impairment of mitophagy and leading to reduced inflammation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rosanna Di Paola
- Department of Veterinary Sciences, University of Messina, 98168 Messina, Italy;
| | - Sergio Modafferi
- Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, Italy; (S.M.); (M.L.O.); (V.C.)
| | - Rosalba Siracusa
- Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, Viale Ferdinando Stagno D’Alcontres 31, 98166 Messina, Italy; (R.S.); (R.D.); (L.I.); (D.I.); (S.C.)
| | - Marika Cordaro
- Department of Biomedical, Dental and Morphological and Functional Imaging, University of Messina, Via Consolare Valeria, 98125 Messina, Italy;
| | - Ramona D’Amico
- Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, Viale Ferdinando Stagno D’Alcontres 31, 98166 Messina, Italy; (R.S.); (R.D.); (L.I.); (D.I.); (S.C.)
| | - Maria Laura Ontario
- Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, Italy; (S.M.); (M.L.O.); (V.C.)
| | - Livia Interdonato
- Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, Viale Ferdinando Stagno D’Alcontres 31, 98166 Messina, Italy; (R.S.); (R.D.); (L.I.); (D.I.); (S.C.)
| | - Angela Trovato Salinaro
- Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, Italy; (S.M.); (M.L.O.); (V.C.)
- Correspondence: (A.T.S.); (R.F.)
| | - Roberta Fusco
- Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Messina, Via Consolare Valeria, 98125 Messina, Italy
- Correspondence: (A.T.S.); (R.F.)
| | - Daniela Impellizzeri
- Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, Viale Ferdinando Stagno D’Alcontres 31, 98166 Messina, Italy; (R.S.); (R.D.); (L.I.); (D.I.); (S.C.)
| | - Vittorio Calabrese
- Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, Italy; (S.M.); (M.L.O.); (V.C.)
| | - Salvatore Cuzzocrea
- Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, Viale Ferdinando Stagno D’Alcontres 31, 98166 Messina, Italy; (R.S.); (R.D.); (L.I.); (D.I.); (S.C.)
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Fiorillo BF, Maciel JH, Martins M. Composition and natural history of a snake community from the southern Cerrado, southeastern Brazil. Zookeys 2021; 1056:95-147. [PMID: 34512093 PMCID: PMC8390458 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1056.63733] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2021] [Accepted: 07/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
The natural history of a cerrado snake community in a protected area in southeastern Brazil (Santa Bárbara Ecological Station; SBES) is described. A visual guide and an identification key are also provided to assist researchers and local people in identifying snakes in that region. Sampling was performed through pitfall traps, time-constrained search, accidental encounters, and observations by local people for two years, which corresponded to 240 days of sampling. Among the 388 individuals found in the field, 33 snake species belonging to 21 genera of seven families were recorded. Most species were restricted or found at least once in non-forest vegetation types (campo sujo, campo cerrado, and cerrado sensu stricto) and a few were restricted to forest habitats (cerradão). Our results show that most species (1) occupy open areas; (2) present both diurnal and nocturnal activity; (3) are primarily terrestrial; (4) include lizards, mammals and/or anurans in the diet; (5) present seasonal reproductive activity; and (6) use mainly visually oriented defensive tactics. Despite its small size (3,154 ha), the SBES harbours preserved habitats and a rich and typical Cerrado snake fauna, including threatened species. Furthermore, most of the SBES snakes occur in non-forest environments (54%) and some species are sensitive to habitat disturbance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bruno F Fiorillo
- Programa de pós-graduação em Ecologia Aplicada, Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz, Universidade de São Paulo, 13418-900, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil Universidade de São Paulo Piracicaba Brazil.,Herp Trips, RPPN Trápaga, Rodovia SP-139, km 80, Zona Rural, S/N - Abaitinga, São Miguel Arcanjo, São Paulo, Brazil Herp Trips São Paulo Brazil
| | - Jorge Henry Maciel
- Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-090, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Universidade de São Paulo São Paulo Brazil
| | - Marcio Martins
- Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-090, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Universidade de São Paulo São Paulo Brazil
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Starko S, Demes KW, Neufeld CJ, Martone PT. Convergent evolution of niche structure in Northeast Pacific kelp forests. Funct Ecol 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13621] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/20/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Samuel Starko
- Department of Botany & Biodiversity Research Centre University of British Columbia Vancouver BC Canada
- Department of Biology University of Victoria Victoria BC Canada
- Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre Bamfield BC Canada
| | - Kyle W. Demes
- Institutional Strategic Awards Simon Fraser University Burnaby BC Canada
| | | | - Patrick T. Martone
- Department of Botany & Biodiversity Research Centre University of British Columbia Vancouver BC Canada
- Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre Bamfield BC Canada
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Snake diversity in floodplains of central South America: Is flood pulse the principal driver? ACTA OECOLOGICA 2019. [DOI: 10.1016/j.actao.2019.04.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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de Fraga R, Ferrão M, Stow AJ, Magnusson WE, Lima AP. Different environmental gradients affect different measures of snake β-diversity in the Amazon rainforests. PeerJ 2018; 6:e5628. [PMID: 30280020 PMCID: PMC6162079 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.5628] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2018] [Accepted: 08/23/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Mechanisms generating and maintaining biodiversity at regional scales may be evaluated by quantifying β-diversity along environmental gradients. Differences in assemblages result in biotic complementarities and redundancies among sites, which may be quantified through multi-dimensional approaches incorporating taxonomic β-diversity (TBD), functional β-diversity (FBD) and phylogenetic β-diversity (PBD). Here we test the hypothesis that snake TBD, FBD and PBD are influenced by environmental gradients, independently of geographic distance. The gradients tested are expected to affect snake assemblages indirectly, such as clay content in the soil determining primary production and height above the nearest drainage determining prey availability, or directly, such as percentage of tree cover determining availability of resting and nesting sites, and climate (temperature and precipitation) causing physiological filtering. We sampled snakes in 21 sampling plots, each covering five km2, distributed over 880 km in the central-southern Amazon Basin. We used dissimilarities between sampling sites to quantify TBD, FBD and PBD, which were response variables in multiple-linear-regression and redundancy analysis models. We show that patterns of snake community composition based on TBD, FBD and PBD are associated with environmental heterogeneity in the Amazon. Despite positive correlations between all β-diversity measures, TBD responded to different environmental gradients compared to FBD and PBD. Our findings suggest that multi-dimensional approaches are more informative for ecological studies and conservation actions compared to a single diversity measure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rafael de Fraga
- Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil.,Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.,Programa de Pós-graduação em Sociedade, Natureza e Desenvolvimento, Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará, Santarém, Pará, Brazil
| | - Miquéias Ferrão
- Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil
| | - Adam J Stow
- Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - William E Magnusson
- Coordenação de Biodiversidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil
| | - Albertina P Lima
- Coordenação de Biodiversidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil
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Reardon S, Schoeman MC. Species Richness, Functional Diversity and Assemblage Structure of Insectivorous Bats Along an Elevational Gradient in Tropical West Africa. ACTA CHIROPTEROLOGICA 2017. [DOI: 10.3161/15081109acc2017.19.2.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Shannon Reardon
- School of Life Sciences, Biological Sciences Building, South Ring Road, Westville Campus, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Kwa-Zulu Natal 3630, Republic of South Africa
| | - M. Corrie Schoeman
- School of Life Sciences, Biological Sciences Building, South Ring Road, Westville Campus, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Kwa-Zulu Natal 3630, Republic of South Africa
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Moura MR, Costa HC, Argôlo AJS, Jetz W. Environmental constraints on the compositional and phylogenetic beta-diversity of tropical forest snake assemblages. J Anim Ecol 2017; 86:1192-1204. [PMID: 28543388 DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12699] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2017] [Accepted: 05/07/2017] [Indexed: 01/26/2023]
Abstract
The ongoing biodiversity crisis increases the importance and urgency of studies addressing the role of environmental variation on the composition and evolutionary history of species assemblages, but especially the tropics and ectotherms remain understudied. In regions with rainy summers, coexistence of tropical ectothermic species may be determined by the partitioning of the climatic niche, as ectotherms can rely on water availability and thermoregulatory behaviour to buffer constraints along their climatic niche. Conversely, tropical ectotherms facing dry summers would have fewer opportunities to climatic niche partitioning and other processes rather than environmental filtering would mediate species coexistence. We used 218 snake assemblages to quantify the compositional (CBD) and phylogenetic (PBD) beta-diversity of snakes in the Atlantic Forest (AF) hotspot, South America. We identify two AF regions with distinct climatological regimes: dry summers in the northern-AF and rainy summers in the southern-AF. While accounting for the influence of multiscale spatial processes, we disentangle the relative contribution of thermal, water-related and topographic conditions in structuring the CBD and PBD of snake assemblages, and determine the extent in which snake assemblages under distinct climatological regimes are affected by environmental filtering. Thermal conditions best explain CBD and PBD of snakes for the whole AF, whereas water-related factors best explain the structure of snake assemblages within a same climatological regime. CBD and PBD patterns are similarly explained by spatial factors but snake assemblages facing dry summers are more affected by spatial processes operating at fine to intermediate spatial scale, whereas those assemblages in regions with rainy summers have a stronger signature of coarse-scale processes. As expected, environmental filtering plays a stronger role in southern-AF than northern-AF, and the synergism between thermal and water-related conditions is the key cause behind this difference. Differences in climatological regimes within the tropics affect processes mediating species coexistence. The influence of broad-scale gradients (e.g. temperature and precipitation) in structuring tropical ectothermic assemblages is greater in regions with rainy summers where climatic niche partitioning is more likely. Our findings highlight the potential stronger role of biotic interactions and neutral processes in structuring ectothermic assemblages facing changes towards warmer and dryer climates.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mario R Moura
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.,Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal Uberlândia, Uberlândia, MG, Brazil.,Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
| | - Henrique C Costa
- Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
| | - Antônio J S Argôlo
- Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Ilhéus, BA, Brazil
| | - Walter Jetz
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.,Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Berkshire, UK
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Bellini GP, Arzamendia V, Giraudo AR. Is xenodontine snake reproduction shaped by ancestry, more than by ecology? Ecol Evol 2017; 7:263-271. [PMID: 28070289 PMCID: PMC5213804 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.2557] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2016] [Revised: 09/12/2016] [Accepted: 09/17/2016] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
One of the current challenges of evolutionary ecology is to understand the effects of phylogenetic history (PH) and/or ecological factors (EF) on the life-history traits of the species. Here, the effects of environment and phylogeny are tested for the first time on the reproductive biology of South American xenodontine snakes. We studied 60% of the tribes of this endemic and most representative clade in a temperate region of South America. A comparative method (canonical phylogenetic ordination-CPO) was used to find the relative contributions of EF and PH upon life-history aspects of snakes, comparing the reproductive mode, mean fecundity, reproductive potential, and frequency of nearly 1,000 specimens. CPO analysis showed that PH or ancestry explained most of the variation in reproduction, whereas EF explained little of this variation. The reproductive traits under study are suggested to have a strong phylogenetic signal in this clade, the ancestry playing a big role in reproduction. The EF also influenced the reproduction of South American xenodontines, although to a lesser extent. Our finding provides new evidence of how the evolutionary history is embodied in the traits of living species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gisela P. Bellini
- Instituto Nacional de Limnología (CONICET‐UNL)Santa FeArgentina
- Facultad de Humanidades y CienciasUniversidad Nacional del LitoralSanta FeArgentina
| | - Vanesa Arzamendia
- Instituto Nacional de Limnología (CONICET‐UNL)Santa FeArgentina
- Facultad de Humanidades y CienciasUniversidad Nacional del LitoralSanta FeArgentina
| | - Alejandro R. Giraudo
- Instituto Nacional de Limnología (CONICET‐UNL)Santa FeArgentina
- Facultad de Humanidades y CienciasUniversidad Nacional del LitoralSanta FeArgentina
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