Genetic analysis of longevity and their associations with fertility traits in Holstein cattle

The increase of longevity is intended to reduce involuntary culling rates, not extend the life span, and it reflects the ability of animals to successfully cope with the environment and disease during production. Sire model, animal model and repeatability animal models were used to estimate the (co) variance components of longevity and fertility traits. Six longevity and thirteen fertility traits were analysed, including herd life (HL), productive life (PL), number of days between first calving and the end of first lactation or culling (L1); number of days between first calving and the end of the second lactation or culling (L2); number of days between first calving and the end of the third lactation or culling (L3); number of days between first calving and the end of the fourth lactation or culling (L4); age at first service, age at first calving (AFC), the interval from first to last inseminations in heifer (IFLh), conception rate of first insemination in heifer, days open (DO), calving interval, gestation length, interval from calving to first insemination (ICF), interval from first to last inseminations in cow (IFLc), conception rate of first insemination in cow, calving ease (CE), birth weight, and calf survival. The estimated heritabilities (±SE) were 0.018 (±0.003), 0.015 (±0.003), 0.049 (±0.004), 0.025 (±0.003), 0.009 (±0.002) and 0.011 (±0.002) for HL, PL, L1, L2, L3 and L4, respectively. Strong correlations were appeared in HL and PL; the genetic and phenotypic correlation coefficients were 0.998 and 0.985, respectively. There were high genetic and phenotypic correlations which were observed in L1 and L2, L2 and L3, L3 and L4, respectively. All fertility traits of heifer showed medium to high heritability, while the cow showed low heritability. All heifer fertility traits had low genetic associations with longevity traits, ranging from -0.018 (L2 and IFLh) to 0.257 (L3 and AFC). Most of the fertility traits showed negative correlations with longevity traits in different parities, and we recommend DO, ICF, IFLc and CE as indirect indicators of longevity traits in dairy cows, but we also need to take into account the differences between parities.

Stress-induced perturbations in intracellular amino acids reprogram mRNA translation in osmoadaptation independently of the ISR

The integrated stress response (ISR) plays a pivotal role in adaptation of translation machinery to cellular stress. Here, we demonstrate an ISR-independent osmoadaptation mechanism involving reprogramming of translation via coordinated but independent actions of mTOR and plasma membrane amino acid transporter SNAT2. This biphasic response entails reduced global protein synthesis and mTOR signaling followed by translation of SNAT2. Induction of SNAT2 leads to accumulation of amino acids and reactivation of mTOR and global protein synthesis, paralleled by partial reversal of the early-phase, stress-induced translatome. We propose SNAT2 functions as a molecular switch between inhibition of protein synthesis and establishment of an osmoadaptive translation program involving the formation of cytoplasmic condensates of SNAT2-regulated RNA-binding proteins DDX3X and FUS. In summary, we define key roles of SNAT2 in osmotolerance.

[Application of seven prediction models of vaginal birth after cesarean in a Chinese hospital]

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the seven existing vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) screening tools and to identify additional factors that may predict VBAC or failed trial of labor in China.

METHODS

In the study, 53 patients with 1 previous cesarean delivery who then delivered between January 1, 2007 and Novenber 31, 2014 were recruited. The average age of the patients was (32.1±3.5) years,the average gestational age was (38.0±2.3) weeks. There was no significant difference of the successful group and the failed group in the maternal/neonatal mortality and morbidity, also in the incidence of the postpartum hemorrhage and the postpartum infection. The probability of VBAC was calculated for each participant using 7 prediction models created by Weinstein, Flamm, Grobman, Gonen, Troyer, Smith and Torri. The data were analyzed using t test, rank-sum test, and receiver operating curve analysis.

RESULTS

44 trial of labor patients had a vaginal birth after cesarean delivery, and the successful rate was 83%. The scores between the successful group and the failed group had significant difference when evaluated by Weinstein and Grobman scoring models only. After recalculating the successful rate of VBAC in different score levels according to the references, there was significant difference between the rates of different score levels when evaluated by the Weinstein model. The successful rates of different score levels were higher compared to the references (<50%) when evaluated by the Troyer (70%), Gonen (60%), Torri (85.7%) models. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of Weinstein prediction model (0.746) and Flamm prediction model (0.723) were more than 0.7, and there was no significant difference between the seven models.

CONCLUSION

Among the seven scoring models, the Weinstein model is more applicable to the population of our country, but a new model more applying to Chinese women still needs to be created.

Technical note: concentration and composition of airborne aerobic bacteria inside an enclosed rabbit shed

<p>Numerous studies have been conducted to analyse bacterial aerosols in animal houses, which is beneficial for the control of animal diseases. However, little information on aerosols in enclosed rabbit sheds was available. An FA-1 sampler was employed to collect air samples in an enclosed rabbit house in the Qingdao region of China. Concentration, composition, and aerodynamics of bacterial aerosols inside the enclosed rabbit shed were systematically analysed. The concentration of airborne bacteria inside the rabbit shed was 2.11-6.36×104 colony forming unit/m3 (CFU/m3). Seventeen species of bacteria belonging to eight genera were identified. Among these, there were 11 species belonging to 4 genera of gram-positive bacteria, and 6 species belonging to 4 genera of gram-negative bacteria. The dominant species of bacteria were, in descending order, Micrococcus luteus (49.4%), Staphylococcus epidermidis (25.5%), and Alcaligenes odorans (10.2%). A total of about 76.3% of airborne bacteria was distributed in stages C-F of the FA-1 sampler (that ranges from A to F), with aerodynamic radii &lt;3.3 μm in diameter. These particulates could enter lower respiratory tracks and even alveoli, posing a potential threat to the health of both animals and breeders.</p>

Ambient-temperature incubation for the field detection of Escherichia coli in drinking water

AIMS

 Escherichia coli is the pre-eminent microbiological indicator used to assess safety of drinking water globally. The cost and equipment requirements for processing samples by standard methods may limit the scale of water quality testing in technologically less developed countries and other resource-limited settings, however. We evaluate here the use of ambient-temperature incubation in detection of E. coli in drinking water samples as a potential cost-saving and convenience measure with applications in regions with high (>25°C) mean ambient temperatures.

METHODS AND RESULTS

  This study includes data from three separate water quality assessments: two in Cambodia and one in the Dominican Republic. Field samples of household drinking water were processed in duplicate by membrane filtration (Cambodia), Petrifilm™ (Cambodia) or Colilert® (Dominican Republic) on selective media at both standard incubation temperature (35–37°C) and ambient temperature, using up to three dilutions and three replicates at each dilution. Matched sample sets were well correlated with 80% of samples (n = 1037) within risk-based microbial count strata (E. coli CFU 100 ml−1 counts of <1, 1–10, 11–100, 101–1000, >1000), and a pooled coefficient of variation of 17% (95% CI 15–20%) for paired sample sets across all methods.

CONCLUSIONS

  These results suggest that ambient-temperature incubation of E. coli in at least some settings may yield sufficiently robust data for water safety monitoring where laboratory or incubator access is limited.

Sequential projection pursuit with kernel matrix update and symbolic model selection

This paper proposes a novel way for generating reliable low-dimensional features with improved class separability in a kernel-induced feature space. The feature projections rely on a very efficient sequential projection pursuit method, adapted to support nonlinear projections using a new kernel matrix update scheme. This enables the gradual removal of structure from the space of residual dimensions to allow the recovery of multiple projections. An adaptive kernel function is employed to unfold different types of data characteristics. We follow a holistic model selection procedure that, together with the optimal projections, dimensionality, and kernel parameters, additionally optimizes symbolically the projection index that controls the actual measurement of the data interestingness without user interaction. We tackle the underlying complex bi-level optimization model as a mixture of evolutionary and gradient search. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm over existing approaches is demonstrated with benchmark evaluations and comparisons.