This thesis investigates whether Gibsonian Human–Robot Interface Design (GHRID) can improve the way humans understand the perceptual and action-related states of autonomous systems. Building on ecological psychology, the work argues that robot interfaces should not merely communicate internal states through symbolic cues, but should make the robot’s perceived environment, action possibilities, and constraints directly perceivable. The theoretical basis of the thesis is the GHRID taxonomy, whi...
La rigenerazione ossea in seguito a frattura è un processo altamente coordinato che si basa sul reclutamento e dalla differenziazione delle cellule staminali e progenitrici scheletriche, skeletal stem and progenitor cells (SSPCs). Queste cellule costituiscono una popolazione altamente eterogenea con capacità rigenerative distinte, che variano in funzione del tessuto di origine. Tuttavia, la relazione tra l’identità delle SSPC e il loro potenziale rigenerativo non è ancora completamente defini...
A single antibody can occasionally bind targets with no evolutionary relationship, a phenomenon termed molecular mimicry. The neutralizing anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody CV07-200 recognizes both the viral Spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) and RSSL-01370, a surface protein of the commensal bacterium Streptococcus salivarius, despite no detectable sequence or structural homology. This thesis investigates the structural basis of that cross-reactivity through an integrative computational pipeline for...
Chloroplasts and mitochondria are the key bioenergetic organelles in plant cells. Metabolic coordination and retrograde communication between them are essential for maintaining plant cellular homeostasis under various environmental conditions. In the model moss Physcomitrium patens, we recently demonstrated that AMBRA1 (Activating Molecule in Beclin-1 Regulated Autophagy 1), protein that is involved in regulation of autophagy, mitophagy, and cell proliferation in animal cells, is involved in ...
Nannochloropsis oceanica è una microalga marina con potenziale per la produzione di oli e composti ad alto valore nutrizionale. Grazie al metabolismo fotosintetico, che le permette di sfruttare la luce solare come energia e la CO2 come fonte di carbonio, costituisce una piattaforma promettente per applicazioni bioindustriali sostenibili.
Negli ultimi anni, la necessità di alternative ai processi di sintesi chimica, spesso caratterizzati da elevato impatto ambientale, ha favorito l’interesse v...
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most widespread, highly heterogeneous, and aggressive brain tumor that is classified as a grade IV glioma. Understanding the mechanisms controlling GBM invasiveness poses a major clinical challenge in the field. Mitochondria play a central role in promoting cancer cell migration by supplying ATP. Recent studies have demonstrated that cyclosporin A (CsA), a pharmacological inhibitor of the permeability transition pore (PTP), a mitochondrial Ca2+-activated c...
This study aimed to characterize a ttc37 knockout zebrafish model as an in
vivo system for investigating TTC37-related THES. The mutant line was
validated through PCR-based genotyping and agarose gel electrophoresis,
allowing the identification of wild-type, heterozygous, and homozygous
animals. Bioinformatic analyses were performed to characterize the
zebrafish ttc37 gene, its predicted Ttc37 protein structure, conserved TPR
domains, and protein–protein interaction network within the SKI-exo...
Spatial transcriptomics (ST) technologies enable simultaneous profiling of gene expression and spatial organisation at single-cell resolution. A critical step in ST data analysis is the automated assignment of cell-type identities to spatially profiled cells, a task for which dedicated methods remain scarce and tools developed for single-cell RNA sequencing are routinely repurposed despite the distinct characteristics of spatial data. This thesis presents a comparative analysis of cell-type i...
Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) provide a conceptual framework to describe the regulatory interactions that control gene expression and cellular identity. The advent of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has enabled the investigation of transcriptional regulation at unprecedented resolution, revealing extensive cellular heterogeneity. However, gene expression data alone offer limited insight into upstream regulatory mechanisms such as chromatin accessibility and transcription factor bindi...
Mammalian development is a highly complex and tightly regulated process that developmental biology still seeks to understand. Because embryogenesis occurs within the maternal uterus, stem cell-based in vitro models have been established to study these events without extensive animal-based experimentation. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the canonical Wnt pathway inhibitor XAV939 and the over-the-counter drug ibuprofen on ETiX embryoids, a recently generated 3D mouse embryoid mo...
