Gabriele Spatola Contacts: gabriele.spatola@phd.unipi.itORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0413-2614 Thesis supervisors: Prof. Andrea Armani Project title: Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Technologies to Support Food Traceability, Hygiene, and Safety Abstract: Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies are extremely powerful tools capable of sequencing and simultaneously analyzing millions of DNA molecules, opening new perspectives in the fields of food safety and traceability. Metabarcoding (amplicon sequencing), Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) and Whole Genome Shotgun (Shotgun) are the most widely used and promising NGS techniques. However, the implementation and standardization of NGS techniques to support food traceability, hygiene, and safety are still limited. This research project aims to apply NGS technologies to address food businesses and official control needs by developing specific protocols for food authentication, microbiota characterization and foodborne pathogen and spoilage microorganisms’ identification in different food matrices and food production facilities environments. Specifically, the project will develop dedicated laboratory protocols (Wet-lab) and bioinformatics pipelines (Dry-lab) for various types of food matrices and analytical objectives. Finally, the developed protocols will undergo experimental validation in collaboration with official laboratories, thereby enabling a concrete and applicable technology transfer to laboratory operations. Publications: Spatola, G., Giusti, A., Mancini, S., Tinacci, L., Nuvoloni, R., Fratini, F., … & Armani, A. (2024). Assessment of the information to consumers on insects-based products (Novel Food) sold by e-commerce in the light of the EU legislation: when labelling compliance becomes a matter of accuracy. Food Control, 162, 110440. Giusti, A., Spatola, G., Mancini, S., Nuvoloni, R., & Armani, A. (2024). Novel foods, old issues: Metabarcoding revealed mislabeling in insect-based products sold by e-commerce on the EU market. Food Research International, 184, 114268. Spatola, G., Giusti, A., & Armani, A. (2024). The “Dry-Lab” Side of Food Authentication: Benchmark of Bioinformatic Pipelines for the Analysis of Metabarcoding Data. Foods, 13(13), 2102. Spatola, G., Giusti, A., Gasperetti, L., Nuvoloni, R., Dalmasso, A., Chiesa, F., & Armani, A. (2025). 16S rRNA metabarcoding applied to the microbiome of insect products (novel food): a comparative analysis of three reference databases. Italian Journal of Food Safety. Oral communications at the conference: G. Spatola, A. Giusti, S. Mancini, L. Tinacci, R. Nuvoloni, A. Armani. “Insects-Based Products (Novel Food) Sold by E-Commerce: Assessment of the Information to Consumers in the Light of the EU Legislation”, SISVET 2024, Parma (PA), 12–14 Giugno 2024 G. Spatola, A. Giusti, L. Gasperetti, R. Nuvoloni, A. Dalmasso, F. Chiesa, A. Armani. “Metabarcoding del gene 16S rRNA applicato al microbioma di prodotti a base di insetti (Novel Food): analisi comparativa di tre database di riferimento”, AIVI – XXXIII Congresso dell’Associazione Italiana Veterinari Igienisti, 11–13 Settembre 2024, Castellammare di Stabia (NA)