About the Authors

Domenico Iuso

Affiliation Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy

Marta Czernik

Affiliation Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy

Fiorella Di Egidio

Affiliation Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy

Silvestre Sampino

Affiliation Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy

Federica Zacchini

Affiliation Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy

Michal Bochenek

Affiliation National Research Institute of Animal Production, Balice, Poland

Zdzislaw Smorag

Affiliation National Research Institute of Animal Production, Balice, Poland

Jacek A. Modlinski

Affiliation Department of Experimental Embryology, Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding, Polish Academy of Sciences, Jastrzebiec, Poland

Grazyna Ptak

ploi@unite.it (PL); gptak@unite.it (GP)

Affiliation Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy

Pasqualino Loi

ploi@unite.it (PL); gptak@unite.it (GP)

Affiliation Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy

Competing Interests

This work has been supported by several public (international and national) and private funding bodies: European Community Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement n° 210103; to GP: EU FP7-KBBE -2009-3 Programme, project n° 244356, NextGen, and PRIN MIUR (protocol n° 2009JE3CHM), plus private funds from the Bank Foundation Tercas (Teramo, Italy). This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: PL DI GP. Performed the experiments: DI MC FDE MB FZ SS. Analyzed the data: DI MC PL MB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MB ZS JM. Wrote the paper: PL DI.