Environmental stress and food chain: molecular approaches

General aims:
The Course is divided into four teaching units and has the main objective of illustrating to students, through general concepts and analytical technologies, some paradigmatic examples relating to the impact of environmental stress on food-producing animals, with reflections on the biological dynamics and the relationship between parasites and their respective hosts, and on the food assessment processes.
Aims of the Teaching Units:
TEACHING UNIT: "Host-parasite dynamics in a changing environment"
The Unit aims to provide a comprehensive view of the effects of environmental changes on host-parasite relationships assuming a well known food-producing animal, the honeybee, as a reference model for sustainable, environmental-driven livestock production.
TEACHING UNIT: "Authenticity and quality issues in animal food products"
The Unit aim is to provide student knowledge in analytical techniques for food authenticity and quality.
TEACHING UNIT: "Environmental proteomics"
The unit aims to understand how organisms respond to environmental stress at the molecular level through an integrated omic approach. The course provides examples of proteomic approaches to study changes in protein abundance and post-translational modifications in response to environmental stressors.
TEACHING UNIT: " High Resolution Mass Spectrometry approaches toward environmental risks detection involved in food safety "
The Unit aims to provide the main knowledge in the field of inspections in relation to the Community reference standards and national transpositions (National Residual Plan) for quality analysis, certification, fraud and food safety in production chains of food of animal origin. The course provides the theoretical bases and practical applications of the main new techniques to protect food safety along food chain of food of animal origin

General learning outcomes:
The students are expected to acquire knowledge and analytical skills to interpret the impact of environmental stress in food-producing animals through the biomolecular and chemical analysis of a) changes in the proteome and parasite load in sensitive hosts, and b) indicators of the origin, quality and safety of food of animal origin
Learning outcomes of the Teaching Units:
TEACHING UNIT: "Host-parasite dynamics in a changing environment"
The students are expected: a) to learn the main morphological and molecular techniques to investigate the dynamics of honeybee parasites, and b) to know the effects of environmental changes on parasites relationships with their host through the review of selected case studies
TEACHING UNIT: "Authenticity and quality issues in animal food products"
Expected outcomes concern student capability to approach authenticity issues to specific case studies.
TEACHING UNIT: "Environmental proteomics"
Students will have knowledge on sample preparation, raw data acquisition, post-acquisition data analysis and functional analysis. By integrating proteomic techniques with bioinformatics, students will gain the skills needed to effectively analyze complex multi-omic datasets.

TEACHING UNIT: " High Resolution Mass Spectrometry approaches toward environmental risks detection involved in food safety "
The Unit and its learning outcomes will examine the knowledge of the main analytical techniques used at inspection level in the field of food of animal origin. Learning outcomes will be considered the knowledge of analytical techniques with regard to the reference regulations, executive procedures and interpretation of the data for the purpose of understanding the analytical results usually used for food safety indicators of food of animal origin