Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system and the most common neurodegenerative disease in young adults, characterized by motor, sensory, visual, and cognitive impairments. Vitamin E (α-Tocopherol), a fat-soluble antioxidant, may influence cognitive function, disability, and mood in MS. One hundred eighty-four Italian Caucasian MS patients and ninety-four heal...

Gene expression can accelerate ecological divergence by rapidly tweaking the response of an organism to novel environments, with more divergent environments exerting stronger selection and supposedly, requiring faster adaptive responses. Organisms adapted to extreme environments provide ideal systems to test this hypothesis, particularly when compared to related species with milder ecological niches. The Emperor penguin ( Apte...

Antarctica is the most extreme continent of Earth, with strong winds, freezing temperatures on land, and ocean temperatures constantly below 0 °C. Nonetheless, the Antarctic Ocean is home to an astounding diversity of living organisms that adapted to the multiple challenges posed by this environment via a diverse set of evolutionary traits. Although the recent advancements in sequencing technologies clarified the molecular bas...

The Antarctic continent is one of the most pristine environments on planet Earth, yet one of the most fragile and susceptible to the effects of the ongoing climate change. The overwhelming majority of the components of Antarctic marine trophic chain are stenotherm organisms, highly adapted to the extreme, but extremely stable, freezing temperatures of the Antarctic ocean, which have not changed significantly during the past fi...

Camelids have been known in South America since the late Pliocene, where they arrived from North America as part of the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI). They became extinct in North America by the late Pleistocene, while surviving in the Southern Cone of South America and in high altitudes of the Andean region. Extinct South American camelids are generally included in the genera Palaeolama and Hemiauchenia , members o...