Cultural gems linked open data: Mapping culture and intangible heritage in European cities.

The recovery and resilience of the cultural and creative sectors after the COVID-19 pandemic is a current topic with priority for the European Commission. Cultural gems is a crowdsourced web platform managed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission aimed at creating community-led maps as well as a common repository for cultural and creative places across European cities and towns. More than 130,000 physical locations and online cultural activities in more than 300 European cities and towns are currently tracked by the application. The main objective of Cultural gems consists in raising a holistic vision of European culture, reinforcing a sense of belonging to a common European cultural space. This data article describes the ontology developed for Cultural gems, adopted to represent the domain of knowledge of the application by means of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles and following the paradigms of Linked Open Data (LOD). We provide an overview of this dataset, and describe the ontology model, along with the services used to access and consume the data.

Mitochondrial DNA variants of Podolian cattle breeds testify for a dual maternal origin.

BACKGROUND: Over the past 15 years, 300 out of 6000 breeds of all farm animal species identified by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have gone extinct. Among cattle, many Podolian breeds are seriously endangered in various European areas. Podolian cattle include a group of very ancient European breeds, phenotypically close to the aurochs ancestors (Bos primigenius). The aim of the present study was to assess the genetic diversity of Podolian breeds and to reconstruct their origin. METHODOLOGY: The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control-regions of 18 Podolian breeds have been phylogenetically assessed. Nine non-Podolian breeds have been also included for comparison. CONCLUSION: The overall analysis clearly highlights some peculiarities in the mtDNA gene pool of some Podolian breeds. In particular, a principal component analysis point to a genetic proximity between five breeds (Chianina, Marchigiana, Maremmana, Podolica Italiana and Romagnola) reared in Central Italy and the Turkish Grey. We here propose the suggestive hypothesis of a dual ancestral contribution to the present gene pool of Podolian breeds, one deriving from Eastern European cattle; the other arising from the arrival of Middle Eastern cattle into Central Italy through a different route, perhaps by sea, ferried by Etruscan boats. The historical migration of Podolian cattle from North Eastern Europe towards Italy has not cancelled the mtDNA footprints of this previous ancient migration.

Uniparental genetic systems: a male and a female perspective in the domestic cattle origin and evolution

Over the last 20 years, the two uniparentally inherited marker systems, namely mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome have been widely employed to solve questions about origin and prehistorical range expansions, demographic processes, both in humans and domestic animals. The mtDNA and the Y chromosome, with their unique patterns of inheritance, continue to be extremely important source of information. These markers played significant roles in farm animals in the evaluation of the genetic variation within- and among-breed strains and lines and have widely applied in the fields of linkage mapping, paternity tests, prediction of breeding values in genome-assisted selection, analysis of genetic diversity within breeds detection of population admixture, assessment of inbreeding and relationships between breeds, and assignment of individuals to their breed of origin. This approach offers a unique opportunity to save genetic resources and achieving improved productivity. In the past years, significant progress was achieved in reconstructing detailed cattle phylogenies; many studies indicated multiple parental sources and several levels of phylogeographic structuring. More detailed researches are still in progress in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of such extant variability. This paper is focused on reviewing the use of the two uniparental markers as valuable tool for the characterization of cattle genetic diversity. Furthermore, their implications in animal breeding, management and genetic resources conservation are also reported.