Although Scientific Societies have stated that there are very few indications for the use of soy-based formula (SF) in infant nutrition, their utilization rates have been repeatedly found to be higher than expected. It is likely that a significant role in this regard is played by the belief that the use of SF during infancy can reduce the risk of the development of several diseases later in life. Although no definitive data that can substantiate these claims have been collected, many people perceive soy consumption to confer significant health benefits and might also use soy for infant nutrition. However, not all the problems regarding safety of SF in infants have been definitively solved. Among risks, the potentially toxic role of the phyto-oestrogens contained in SF is not definitively established. In vitro and animal studies have raised suspicions that SF could have potentially negative effects on sexual development and reproductive function, neurobehavioral development, immune function, and thyroid function. Several studies in humans have aimed to assess whether the results of animal studies can be applied to humans and whether SF can be used in infants following the official recommendations. The results are somewhat conflicting. The aim of this narrative review is to discuss what is presently known regarding the impact of phyto-oestrogens in SF on early and late child development. PubMed was used to search for the studies published from January 1980 to June 2017 using the keywords: “soy,” “soy formula,” “child,” “phytoestrogens.” Analysis of the literature showed that a global evaluation of the impact of modern SFs on human development seems to suggest that their use is not associated with relevant abnormalities. Only children with congenital hypothyroidism need adequate monitoring of thyroid function.

No abstract

Genes from the DREB family are involved in plant's responses to dehydration and possibly play a role in their ability to tolerate water stress. Understanding the relationship between water stress tolerance and expression of specific genes requires the isolation and characterisation of the sequences that may be involved. We report the isolation and characterisation of a gene in Triticum durum, namely TdDRF1, which belongs to the DREB gene family and produces three forms of transcripts through alternative splicing. The relationship between the expression profile of the TdDRF1 gene and water stress was assessed by real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction in a time-course experiment up to 7 days. Water stress experimental conditions were selected to relate changes in gene expressions during a time frame reflecting as closely as possible those during which water stress starts having a visible effect under field conditions. Among the three isoforms of TdDRF1, the truncated form TdDRF1.2 was at all times the most expressed. Its expression, together with the TdDRF1.3 transcript, increased sharply after 4 days of dehydration, but then decreased at 7 days. The TdDRF1.1 transcript was the least expressed overall and varied least with the duration of dehydration. Genotypic differences in TdDRF1 gene expression are currently under investigation.

No abstract

Oat kernels exhibit an extra-soft texture, a trait recently demonstrated to be largely modulated by starch-bound tryptophan-rich 2S proteins, the vromindolines. In this study, fractionation by two-dimensional electrophoresis of starch-bound proteins in 25 oat (Avena sativa) cultivars and 11 diploid or tetraploid Avena species revealed novel 2S proteins called Avena α-amylase/trypsin-inhibitors (AATI) because of their sequence similarity with wheat α-amylase/trypsin inhibitors. Thirty-seven AATI polypeptides, about 14 kDa in size, were split into three families named AATI-1, AATI-2, and AATI-3 with different primary structures and isoelectric points. AATI-1 and AATI-2 proteins showed 55.5-60.0 % sequence similarity with wheat α-amylase inhibitors CM1, CM2, and CM16, which have been found to cause innate immunity responses in celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Diploid A-genome and tetraploid AC-genome oat species possess three and five genes encoding for the AATI proteins, respectively, whereas hexaploid A. sativa exhibits 12 genes dispersed over the A-, C-, and D-genomes. Some AATI proteins expressed in hexaploid oats were assigned to the A-genome based on similarity to their counterparts in diploid species, contributing to further clarify the genetic origin of hexaploid oats. Moreover, AATI may interact with starch-bound vromindolines in determining the extra-soft texture of oat kernels and, due to their balanced amino acid compositions, may contribute to the biological value of oat proteins in a positive manner.