For years, it has been thought that the field of dentistry was referring exclusively to some diseases that strictly affect the oral cavity. Dental caries, periodontal disease, and pathologies associated with their worsening were considered almost the only interest in scientific research in dentistry. Recent studies have begun to shed light on the effect of the oral microbiota on general health and on the crucial role of dentistry in its maintenance. selleck inhibitor In this way, we came to understand that the bacterial populations that make up the oral microbiota can vary profoundly between individuals and that contribute in a fundamental way to outlining the so-called "oral signature". This characteristic is called into question to evaluate the susceptibility, or lack thereof, of the subject to the contraction of a wide range of pathologies, apparently not connected with oral health. From this evidence, it will also be possible to study therapeutic approaches aimed at the eradication of species considered at risk or colonization with species considered protective; thus, giving life to so-called "personalized dentistry". Therefore, this Special Issue is aimed at spreading the scientific knowledge over the current limits in terms of new molecular and culturomic approaches towards the diagnosis of oral microbiota and the treatment techniques of eventually associated systemic diseases. In vivo studies and systematic literature reviews with quantitative analysis of results, when possible, will be given a high priority.Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are prevalent in the genomes of all organisms. They are widely used as genetic markers, and are insertion/deletion mutation hotspots, which directly influence genome evolution. However, little is known about such important genomic components in ciliated protists, a large group of unicellular eukaryotes with extremely long evolutionary history and genome diversity. With recent publications of multiple ciliate genomes, we start to get a chance to explore perfect SSRs with motif size 1-100 bp and at least three motif repeats in nine species of two ciliate classes, Oligohymenophorea and Spirotrichea. We found that homopolymers are the most prevalent SSRs in these A/T-rich species, with AAA (lysine, charged amino acid; also seen as an SSR with one-adenine motif repeated three times) being the codons repeated at the highest frequencies in coding SSR regions, consistent with the widespread alveolin proteins rich in lysine repeats as found in Tetrahymena. Micronuclear SSRs are universally more abundant than the macronuclear ones of the same motif-size, except for the 8-bp-motif SSRs in extensively fragmented chromosomes. Both the abundance and A/T content of SSRs decrease as motif-size increases, while the abundance is positively correlated with the A/T content of the genome. Also, smaller genomes have lower proportions of coding SSRs out of all SSRs in Paramecium species. This genome-wide and cross-species analysis reveals the high diversity of SSRs and reflects the rapid evolution of these simple repetitive elements in ciliate genomes. This study modelled the changes in the development processes of the health-threatening tick Ixodes ricinus in Northern Europe as driven by the trends of temperature (1950-2018). We used the ECA&D dataset to calculate the annual accumulated temperature to obtain the development rates of the oviposition, incubation, larva-nymph, and nymph-adult molts. Annual values were used to ascertain the trend in development rates of each stage. The ecological classification of Northern Europe (LANMAP2) was used to summarize results. The temperature in 1950-2018 clearly increased in the target territory. The development rates of every tested life cycle process were faster along the time series. Faster oviposition and incubation rates resulted in central Sweden, Baltic countries, and parts of Finland. Faster molting rates were observed in the same territories and in large areas of Western Norway. The trend of temperature in the period 1950-2018 shows a consistent inflection point around 1990, demonstrating that the increased annual accumulated temperature has a deeper impact on the life cycle of I. ricinus since approximately 1990. Faster development rates could be part of the processes driving the reported spread of the tick in the target area and should be considered as a serious threat to human health.The control of glucose homeostasis is the main goal for both the prevention and management of diabetes and pre-diabetes. Numerous drugs are available, despite their side effects. This is constantly leading people to be inclined to natural alternative treatments. Evidence indicates antioxidant-based nutraceuticals as an optimal tool for the glycaemic control. Currently, a great interest has been focused on the valorisation of agro-food by-products as sources of bioactive compounds including polyphenols. In this sense, we tested the efficacy of novel nutraceutical products based on polyphenolic extract from nectarines (NecP), tomato peels (TP), and olive leaves (EOL) on glycaemic and insulinemic responses. The three formulations contained, respectively, 0.007 mg abscisic acid (ABA)/g, 0.5 mg carotenoids/g, and 150 mg oleuropein/g. Twenty healthy subjects consumed a regular glucose solution (RG) or a treatment beverage (TB) obtained by mixing RG with the individual formulations (TB NecP, TB EOL, and TB TP), separately, and on different days. All three formulations significantly lowered the 30 min glucose plasma peak (p less then 0.05 for all); similarly, NecP and TP also significantly lowered the 30 min insulin plasma peak (p less then 0.05 for all). These results may lead to the hypothesis of a formulation of a multi-component nutraceutical with a synergistic efficacy for the glycaemic control.microRNA-143(miR-143) is a well-known tumor suppressive microRNA that exhibits anti-tumoral function by targeting KRAS signaling pathways in various malignancies. We hypothesized that miR-143 suppresses breast cancer progression by targeting KRAS and its effector molecules. We further hypothesized that high expression of miR-143 is associated with a favorable tumor immune microenvironment of estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer patients which result in improved survival. Two major publicly available breast cancer cohorts; The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium (METABRIC) were used. The miR-143 high expression group was associated with increased infiltration of anti-cancer immune cells and decreased pro-cancer immune cells, as well as enrichment of the genes relating to T helper (Th1) cells resulting in improved overall survival (OS) in ER-positive breast cancer patients. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that high expression of miR-143 in cancer cells associates with a favorable tumor immune microenvironment, upregulation of anti-cancer immune cells, and suppression of the pro-cancer immune cells, associating with better survival of the breast cancer patients.