Andrea Giacomo Locatelli

Scopus Publications

HMGB1, an evolving pleiotropic protein critical for cellular and tissue homeostasis: Role in aging and age-related diseases
Elena Ruggieri, Erika Di Domenico, Andrea Giacomo Locatelli, Flavio Isopo, Sarah Damanti, Rebecca De Lorenzo, Enrico Milan, Giovanna Musco, Patrizia Rovere-Querini, Simone Cenci, Emilie Vénéreau
Ageing Research Reviews, 2024
Estimation of demographic fluctuations within a reproductive roost of Pipistrellus kuhlii inferred from capture-mark-recapture data
Alessandro Lago, Raffaella Molteni, Roberto Toffoli, Andrea G. Locatelli
Revue Suisse De Zoologie, 2023
Despite bats representing one fifth of all mammals, little is known about the ecology and the population status for many species belonging to this order. This is often a consequence of our poor knowledge of population densities and demographic parameters, bats being typically elusive subjects for ecological studies. Capture-mark-recapture studies provide important demographic and ecological data to fill up this information gap. In this study, we monitored animals and gathered data over five years from a reproductive roost of Kuhl's pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii Kuhl, 1817) located in a Natura 2000 site in north-west Italy. One-hundred-thirty-three individuals were captured and demographic parameters collected, including the annual survival probability for both young and adults, the recapture rates for different sex and age cohorts and the adult population size trend. The influence of environmental variables on the population was also assessed, highlighting the relevant impact of winter temperatures and spring rainfalls on individual survival ability. Notably, our study provides for the first time an estimation of the survival rate of adult females of Kuhl's pipistrelle, a crucial information for future design of studies related to this species' ecology and for informing conservation efforts.
Autophagy and longevity: Evolutionary hints from hyper-longevous mammals
Andrea G. Locatelli, Simone Cenci
Frontiers in Endocrinology, 2022
Autophagy is a fundamental multi-tasking adaptive cellular degradation and recycling strategy. Following its causal implication in age-related decline, autophagy is currently among the most broadly studied and challenged mechanisms within aging research. Thanks to these efforts, new cellular nodes interconnected with this phylogenetically ancestral pathway and unexpected roles of autophagy-associated genetic products are unveiled daily, yet the history of functional adaptations of autophagy along its evolutive trail is poorly understood and documented. Autophagy is traditionally studied in canonical and research-wise convenient model organisms such as yeast and mice. However, unconventional animal models endowed with extended longevity and exemption from age-related diseases offer a privileged perspective to inquire into the role of autophagy in the evolution of longevity. In this mini review we retrace the appearance and functions evolved by autophagy in eukaryotic cells and its protective contribution in the pathophysiology of aging.
Evolution of mammalian longevity: age-related increase in autophagy in bats compared to other mammals
Joanna Kacprzyk, Andrea G. Locatelli, Graham M. Hughes, Zixia Huang, Michael Clarke, Vera Gorbunova, Carlotta Sacchi, Gavin S. Stewart, Emma C. Teeling
Aging, 2021
Autophagy maintains cellular homeostasis and its dysfunction has been implicated in aging. Bats are the longest-lived mammals for their size, but the molecular mechanisms underlying their extended healthspan are not well understood. Here, drawing on >8 years of mark-recapture field studies, we report the first longitudinal analysis of autophagy regulation in bats. Mining of published population level aging blood transcriptomes (M. myotis, mouse and human) highlighted a unique increase of autophagy related transcripts with age in bats, but not in other mammals. This bat-specific increase in autophagy transcripts was recapitulated by the western blot determination of the autophagy marker, LC3II/I ratio, in skin primary fibroblasts (Myotis myotis, Pipistrellus kuhlii, mouse), that also showed an increase with age in both bat species. Further phylogenomic selection pressure analyses across eutherian mammals (n=70 taxa; 274 genes) uncovered 10 autophagy-associated genes under selective pressure in bat lineages. These molecular adaptations potentially mediate the exceptional age-related increase of autophagy signalling in bats, which may contribute to their longer healthspans.
Six reference-quality genomes reveal evolution of bat adaptations
David Jebb, Zixia Huang, Martin Pippel, Graham M. Hughes, Ksenia Lavrichenko, Paolo Devanna, Sylke Winkler, Lars S. Jermiin, Emilia C. Skirmuntt, Aris Katzourakis, Lucy Burkitt-Gray, David A. Ray, Kevin A. M. Sullivan, Juliana G. Roscito, Bogdan M. Kirilenko, Liliana M. Dávalos, Angelique P. Corthals, Megan L. Power, Gareth Jones, Roger D. Ransome, Dina K. N. Dechmann, Andrea G. Locatelli, Sébastien J. Puechmaille, Olivier Fedrigo, Erich D. Jarvis, Michael Hiller, Sonja C. Vernes, Eugene W. Myers, Emma C. Teeling
Nature, 2020
Bats possess extraordinary adaptations, including flight, echolocation, extreme longevity and unique immunity. High-quality genomes are crucial for understanding the molecular basis and evolution of these traits. Here we incorporated long-read sequencing and state-of-the-art scaffolding protocols1 to generate, to our knowledge, the first reference-quality genomes of six bat species (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, Rousettus aegyptiacus, Phyllostomus discolor, Myotis myotis, Pipistrellus kuhlii and Molossus molossus). We integrated gene projections from our ‘Tool to infer Orthologs from Genome Alignments’ (TOGA) software with de novo and homology gene predictions as well as short- and long-read transcriptomics to generate highly complete gene annotations. To resolve the phylogenetic position of bats within Laurasiatheria, we applied several phylogenetic methods to comprehensive sets of orthologous protein-coding and noncoding regions of the genome, and identified a basal origin for bats within Scrotifera. Our genome-wide screens revealed positive selection on hearing-related genes in the ancestral branch of bats, which is indicative of laryngeal echolocation being an ancestral trait in this clade. We found selection and loss of immunity-related genes (including pro-inflammatory NF-κB regulators) and expansions of anti-viral APOBEC3 genes, which highlights molecular mechanisms that may contribute to the exceptional immunity of bats. Genomic integrations of diverse viruses provide a genomic record of historical tolerance to viral infection in bats. Finally, we found and experimentally validated bat-specific variation in microRNAs, which may regulate bat-specific gene-expression programs. Our reference-quality bat genomes provide the resources required to uncover and validate the genomic basis of adaptations of bats, and stimulate new avenues of research that are directly relevant to human health and disease1.
Long-Term Monitoring of the Effects of Weather and Marking Techniques on Body Condition in the Kuhl's Pipistrelle Bat, Pipistrellus Kuhlii
Andrea G. Locatelli, Simone Ciuti, Primož Presetnik, Roberto Toffoli, Emma Teeling
Acta Chiropterologica, 2019
Bats are one of the most widespread and speciose orders of mammals. Despite their huge biodiversity, little is known about the natural behaviour and ecology of many species given the difficulty in monitoring and studying them. Pipistrellus kuhlii is one of the most common bats of the Mediterranean biome but its ecology remains ambiguous given the scarcity of longitudinal studies. Such basic information is urgently needed to predict the shift of species distribution range under climate change scenarios. Here, we analysed the effects of weather variables (namely temperature, precipitation, wind speed and air humidity) on the body conditions of P. kuhlii monitored in five maternity roosts in Southern Europe over more than a decade (17 years). Using linear mixed-effect models, we disentangled the impact of weather predictors on body condition variations in 347 individuals. Our results revealed species-specific sensitivity to variations in the monitored four main weather parameters. Through the modelling analysis, we show how weather seasonal variables recorded prior to the capture period had a substantial role in driving bat body condition. A combination of warmer spring-summers and cooler winters was found associated with optimal body condition in P. kuhlii. Our analysis also showed that P. kuhlii bats were favoured by higher spring humidity combined with intermediate precipitation and humidity levels recorded during the summers prior to the capture. The latter parameters (precipitation and humidity) were arguably linked with the proliferation of entomofauna on which bats feed. Additionally, we assessed the body condition of 45 bats that were previously captured and tagged either with bands or PIT-tags, two of the most widespread marking techniques for bats. We showed that bats carrying a ring (band) or a PIT-tag had a body condition that did not differ to that expected for untagged bats. This suggests that transponding bats has no significant effect on body condition, enabling new opportunities for passive monitoring and large-scale long-term longitudinal studies for these animals.
Bats of alpi marittime nature park (north west Italy) and site of community importance IT1160056: Distribution and status
Roberto Toffoli, Paola Culasso, Andrea G. Locatelli, Luca Giraudo
Natural History Sciences, 2016
A survey of bats was carried out at Alpi Marittime Nature Park and more generally within Site of Community Importance (SIC) IT1160056 from April 1991 to January 2015, using different techniques such as: mist-netting, acoustic sampling and roost surveys. Twenty-one species of bats were detected (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, Rhinolophus hipposideros, Myotis bechsteinii, Myotis daubentonii, Myotis emarginatus, Myotis myotis, Myotis mystacinus, Myotis nattereri, Myotis oxygnathus, Pipistrellus kuhlii, Pipistrellus nathusii, Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Pipistrellus pygmaeus, Nyctalus leisleri, Hypsugo savii, Eptesicus nilssonii, Eptesicus serotinus, Barbastella barbastellus, Plecotus auritus, Plecotus macrobullaris, Tadarida teniotis). Species diversity is higher in this area than in other Alpine protected areas of a similar size. Records of E. nilssonii, P. pygmaeus and P. macrobullaris in the study area contribute to the knowledge of the distribution of these species in Piedmont and more generally in Italy. In particular, thanks to records of E. nilssonii, its geographic range could be extended to the western part of the Alps whereas it previously seemed to be only present in the Central-Eastern Alps.
The complete mitochondrial genome of Kuhl’s pipistrelle, Pipistrellus kuhlii (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae)
Andrea G. Locatelli, David Jebb, Emma C. Teeling
Mitochondrial DNA Part B Resources, 2016
The Kuhl’s pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii) is a small, vespertilionid bat species, with a large range extending from the Iberian Peninsula into the Near East and the Arabian Peninsula. In this study, we determine for the first time the complete mitogenome of this species. The P. kuhlii mitogenome is 16,991 base pairs long with 37 genes and 1 control region, showing conserved gene content and order with other vertebrate mitogenomes. The length of the 22 tRNA genes ranges between 60 bp (tRNA-Ser) and 75 bp (tRNA-Leu). The D-loop region is 1553 bp long with low CG content (39.8%).