The objective of the present study was to compare skeletal muscle proteomic profiles, histochemical characteristics, and expression levels of myogenic regulatory factors (MRFs) between fast- versus slow-growing yellow perch Perca flavescens and identify the proteins/peptides that might play a crucial role in the muscle growth dynamic. Yellow perch were nursed in ponds for 6 weeks from larval stage and cultured in two meter diameter tanks thereafter. The fingerlings were graded to select the top 10% and bottom 10% fish which represented fast- and slow-growing groups (31 yellow perch per each group). Our statistical analyses showed 18 proteins that had different staining intensities between fast- and slow-growing yellow perch. From those proteins 10 showed higher expression in slow-growers, and 8 demonstrated higher expression in fast-growers. Fast-growing yellow perch with a greater body weight was influenced by both the muscle fiber hypertrophy and mosaic hyperplasia compared to slow-growing fish. These hyperplastic and hypertrophic growth in fast-grower were associated with not only metabolic enzymes, including creatine kinase, glycogen phosphorylase, and aldolase, but also myoD and myogenin as MRFs. Overall, the results of the present study contribute to the identification of different expression patterns of gene products in fast- and slow-growing fish associated with their muscle growth.

The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM), with a class size of 162, is one of the largest in the nation. In an effort to streamline examination procedures, create a consistent assessment format among courses, replace paper exams, track test questions linked to learning objectives, and reduce exam grading time, our DVM program adopted the use of ExamSoft for core courses beginning in the autumn semester 2014. ExamSoft is an electronic assessment application, which provides a secure testing environment and robust reporting features. CVM uses it for high stakes midterm and finals. Although easily adopted into a didactic course format, its application in laboratory-based examinations proved challenging. Designing, setting up and grading exams for Anatomy and Parasitology courses with a laboratory component have always required substantial time investment, and adding a testing application to the process demanded rethinking and restructuring logistics. After two semesters of process refinement and standardization of a testing device to the iPad, faculty teaching in the Anatomy and Parasitology courses were able to implement ExamSoft in a laboratory setting to realize the same assessment and efficiency gains. Here we describe the benefits of ExamSoft testing in the written and laboratory settings and the lessons learned during the 2-year transition.

Rhodococcus equi is the most common infectious cause of mortality in foals between 1 and 6 months of age. Because of an increase in the number of antibiotic-resistant strains, the optimization of a prophylactic strategy is a key factor in the comprehensive management of R. equi pneumonia.The objectives of this study were to assess the safety and immunogenicity of R. equi-secreted proteins (ReSP) co-administered with either the nanoparticular adjuvant Montanide™ IMS 3012 VG, or a new polymeric adjuvant Montanide™ PET GEL A, and to further investigate the most immunogenic proteins for subsequent immunization/challenge experiments in the development of a vaccine against rhodoccocal pneumonia. The approach involved two phases. The first phase aimed to investigate the safety of vaccination in six adult horses. The second phase aimed to determine the safety and immunogenicity of vaccination in twelve 3-week-old foals.We set out to develop a method based on ultrasound measurements for safety assessment in adult horses in order to evaluate any in situ changes at the injection site, in the skin or the underlying muscle, with quantitative and qualitative data revealing that administration of ReSP combined with the Pet Gel A adjuvant led to an increase in local inflammation, associated with 4- to 7-fold higher levels of anti-R. equi IgGa, IgGb and IgGT, compared to administration of ReSP associated with IMS 3012 adjuvant, but without any impact on animal demeanor. Investigations were then performed in foals with serological and clinical follow-up until 6 months of age. Interestingly, we observed in foals a much lower incidence of adverse local tissue reactions at the injection site than in adult horses, with transient and moderate swelling for the group that received ReSP combined with Pet Gel A. Immunized foals with Pet Gel A adjuvant exhibited a similar response in both IgGa and IgGT levels, but a lower response in IgGb levels, compared to adult horses, with a subisotype profile that may however reflect a bias favorable to R. equi resistance. From the crude extract of secreted proteins, dot-blot screening enabled identification of cholesterol oxidase, mycolyl transferase 3, and PSP (probable secreted protein) as the most immunogenic candidates. Taken together, these results are encouraging in developing a vaccine for foals.

Equine metabolic syndrome (EMS) refers to a cluster of clinical abnormalities including insulin resistance, generalized obesity, and/or increased adiposity in specific locations (regional adiposity) associated with an increased risk of laminitis. However, descriptions of the metabolic phenotype of laminitis-prone horses and ponies have varied among published studies. The metabolic phenotypes routinely measured (e.g., insulin, insulin responses, adipokines, adiposity, and so forth) are highly influenced by the environment and vary due to physiologic factors such as age, breed, and sex, even in normal individuals. Furthermore, not all components of the syndrome (e.g., obesity) may be present in individuals with underlying metabolic derangements. The complexity of the “EMS” phenotype has lead to an ongoing debate as to the canonical features that define the syndrome. Furthermore, little is understood about its pathophysiology. A better understanding of EMS requires a clearer phenotypic definition of EMS; a better grasp of the effects of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence metabolic measures; and an appreciation of the complex interactions between the phenotypic components of the syndrome and the proposed risk factors. In this review, we will summarize the understanding of the EMS phenotype and propose a complex disease model that may help explain the variability in EMS.

Tackling the environmental impact and the compliance with the environmental legislation have become critical challenges for Romanian enterprises. The paper is addressing the environmental protection and management concern by integrating different disciplinary components: environmental legislation aimed at preventing and reducing negative environmental impacts, engineering management aimed at designing the necessary systems for a coherent enterprises functioning, and IT as an efficiency tool for process modeling. The authors performed an empirical research by applying the business process modeling concept within the environmental protection domain taking advantage of the Simple BPM modeling application on the process of establishing environmental objectives. The results highlight that, regardless of industry, any enterprise acts in the green market segment has to remove the environmental management bottlenecks by designing and implementing effective management processes ease to use and correlated with the actual economic requirements.

The effect of diet on barn owl (Tyto alba) breeding biology has been well studied in the temperate regions but not in the more arid Middle East. In temperate regions, barn owls are darker colored and mainly prey upon Cricetidae rodents, whereas in arid regions, they are lighter colored and prey to a larger degree upon Muridae rodents. In this study we analyzed the diet and breeding success of 261 barn owl pairs nesting in Israel. The reproductive success of barn owls declined from March to August, and fledged more young when they consumed a larger proportion of social voles (Microtus socialis guentheri). Although the diet of the lighter colored barn owls in Israel comprises more Muridae than that of the darker morphs in temperate regions, in both regions the number of barn owl young increases with an increased proportion of voles in the diet.

Prolactin is a hormone with diverse biological effects in various species. The secretion of prolactin in horses is affected by season, thyrotropin-releasing hormone, dopaminergic and antidopaminergic agents, exercise and stressful stimuli, meal feeding, estrogen treatment, and antiopioidergic agents. The need of prolactin for mammary growth and lactation in mares has been elucidated from research on endophyte-infected fescue grazing and its associated problems in late gestation. This has led to the development of treatments for fescue toxicity and protocols for inducing lactation in nonpregnant mares. Treatment with prolactin has demonstrated that it is involved with the shedding of the winter coat in spring (increasing concentrations) and likely with the growth of the winter coat in the fall (decreasing concentrations). Prolactin secretion is highly correlated with the photoperiod and is low in winter and high in summer. The coincidence of rising prolactin concentrations in blood with the onset of ovarian activity during the spring transition period in mares led to research showing that prolactin treatment, or inducement of high prolactin secretion by means of antidopaminergic agents, in winter can induce ovarian activity and ovulation in seasonally anovulatory mares. The combination of a small amount of estrogen in addition to an antidopaminergic agent has been shown to produce a synergy resulting in very high prolactin concentrations in blood. The results of 39 years of research on equine prolactin illustrate nicely how the gradual accumulation of knowledge derived from basic research questions can generate applied solutions to real-world problems.

The aim of this study was to identify the metabolic changes that have occurred in Holstein-Friesian cows in Japan over the past 2 decades, based on long-term metabolic profiles. From 1987 to 2004, metabolic profile tests were conducted in 1,700 dairy herds containing ~50,000 cows. The cows were divided into 5 lactation stage groups: early (calving to 49 d in milk, DIM), peak (50–109 DIM), mid (110–209 DIM), and late (210 to dry-off) lactation and the dry period. Principal component analysis was applied to the metabolic profiles at each lactation stage separately to investigate changes in metabolic profiles across the multiyear periods 1987–1992, 1993–1998, and 1999–2004. We determined that cows have probably experienced increasing negative energy balance, energy deficiency, and liver dysfunction during the past 2 decades in Japan.

Injury of suspensory ligament (SL) branch is a frequently diagnosed problem in horses of different ages and disciplines. This case reports for the first time the ultrasonography, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in a 10-year-old draught horse with traumatic chronic SL branch desmitis of 8 months duration. The horse had a grade 3 of 5 left hindlimb lameness with a moderately hot, painful, and diffuse swelling from the tarsus till the hoof. Ultrasonography, both SL branches appeared as enlarged hyperechogenic structures with poor demarcation of their margins and massive periligamentous echogenic materials consistent with fibrosis. Computed tomography showed no osseous lesions but did show enlarged, hypodense, and heterogeneous SL branches with an evidence of periligamentar and peritendenious adhesions and air entrapment areas intermingled within fibrous adhesion. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed no abnormal signal intensity received from the proximal part of SL and its body. There were high and intermediate signal intensities received from inflammatory fluid and periligamentar fibrous adhesions, respectively, around SL branches. Both CT and MRI findings were confirmed by gross postmortem examination. In conclusion, CT and MRI are valuable tools for diagnosis of extensive adhesions associated with chronic SL branch desmitis.

Recent research has shown that melatonin has positive effects on sperm viability during cryopreservation. Therefore, melatonin could potentially be included in commercial stallion semen extender to aid in the survival and function of fresh cooled spermatozoa. The objective of this study was to determine effects of melatonin on stallion sperm motility and viability during 48 h of storage at 5°C. In 4 separate trials, ejaculates from 3 stallions were collected and diluted to a final concentration of 500 million sperm/ejaculate with a skim milk-based extender, without antibiotics, supplemented with 0, 0.1, 1.0 or 10.0 mM of melatonin and stored at 5°C for 48 h. Total motility (TM), progressive motility (PM), track velocity (VCL), straight line velocity (VSL) and smoothed path velocity (VAP) were evaluated by Computer-Assisted Semen Analysis (CASA) at 0, 24 and 48 h of storage. An eosin-nigrosin stain was used to subjectively evaluate the live/dead ratio of spermatozoa at 0, 24 and 48 h of storage. Data were analyzed using the PROC MIXED procedure of SAS. TM, PM and sperm viability decreased over time (P < 0.05); however, there were no differences in TM and PM due to melatonin concentrations at any time point. At 48 h, the addition of 10 mM of melatonin to the extended semen had significantly higher PM (P < 0.05). At 24 and 48 h, semen extended with 10mM of melatonin had significantly decreased VCL and VAP compared with control (P < 0.05). VSL and VAP decreased from 0 to 24 h, but there were no differences in VSL between 24 and 48 h. Overall, addition of melatonin to stallion semen extender did not affect sperm motility and viability during storage at 5°C in this study.

Genetic selection has been very successful at significantly increasing BW and breast muscle proportion in commercial broiler and turkey strains. The mechanisms of breast muscle growth in poultry and the interactive effects of nutritional status and selection are not fully understood. The hypothesis underlying the current study is that feed restriction, simply as a vehicle for controlling early growth, would delay the temporal expression pattern of neonatal (nMyHC) and adult (aMyHC) fast skeletal muscle myosin heavy chain (MyHC) isoforms in the pectoralis major muscle of turkey poults. The poultry growth model used to evaluate this hypothesis consisted of a randombred control turkey line (RBC2) that represents commercial turkeys of the 1960s and a line developed from the RBC2 by selection for BW at 16 wk of age (F line). The F line has significantly heavier breast muscles than the RBC2 concomitant with increased BW, but the proportion of breast muscle relative to BW is similar. A quantitative indirect ELISA using fast skeletal MyHC isoform specific monoclonal antibodies revealed no significant line differences in the temporal expression of posthatch fast skeletal muscle MyHC in ad libitum fed poults. Feed restriction, however, altered the temporal expression patterns of nMyHC and aMyHC in both F line and RBC2 poults compared with the poults fed ad libitum.

Formulation of nutritionally complete and cost efficient diets for yellow perch (Perca flavescens) is a prerequisite for successful intensive culture of this species. One of the objectives of this study was to determine the optimum diet for the grow-out phase of juvenile yellow perch. Fish at the size of 12.9 +/- 4 similar to g were individually marked with passive integrated transponders (PIT)-tags and randomly distributed into six 400 similar to L tanks, 45 fish per tank. This experiment included lysine-deficient [(-) Lys] and lysine-supplemented [(+) Lys] wheat-gluten-based diets in triplicate groups. Our experiment showed that the mean weight of fish fed (+) Lys diet (83.9 +/- 1.5 similar to g) was significantly larger than fish fed (-) Lys diet (68.6 +/- 5.2 similar to g) (P similar to<similar to 0.05). This experiment also showed that the blood plasma concentration of free lysine in (+) Lys group was significantly higher than in (-) Lys group (P similar to<similar to 0.05) and the same trend appeared also in methionine concentrations. The concentration of Lys in deficient group of fish, 3 similar to h after a meal was lower compared with levels of Lys 24 similar to h post-feeding (P similar to<similar to 0.05). Lysine deficiency in diet resulted in significantly higher level of serine, and a similar trend occurred in small and large fish.

The selection processes that have resulted in broiler (meat) and leghorn (eggs) chickens have had very different effects on the pectoralis major and supracoracoideus muscles. The objective of this study, therefore, was to analyze the one-dimensional proteomic profiles of sarcoplasmic protein fractions isolated from the p. major and supracoracoideus muscles collected from 10 chicks from each genotype to compare developmental differences. The sarcoplasmic protein fraction was analyzed by SDS-PAGE. The mean band percentages were analyzed using a mixed model, with strain and muscle type as main effects. Six bands were found to be significantly different across the 2 strains. Strain differences in glycogen phosphorylase, enolase, elongation factor 1, creatine kinase, fructose-bisphosphate aldolase, and glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate-dehydrogenase suggest a genotype-specific shift in energy metabolism during breast muscle growth and development.

Proteins are the main participants in metabolic pathways. However, the analysis of protein abundance patterns associated with those pathways is complicated by the large number of proteins involved. In this study, the objective was to present the application of principal component analysis (PCA) to permit the visualization of developmental proteomic patterns of sarcoplasmic proteins found in breast muscle. Different turkey genotypes and nutritional regimens were used to potentially increase the variability within the sarcoplasmic protein profile. Sarcoplasmic protein fractions from turkey breast muscle samples were collected at 6 ages between 7 to 24 d. Breast muscle samples were collected from 2 distinctly different turkey lines. The poults within each line were either ad libitum or restrict fed. Proteomic PCA plots showed a visual developmental pattern from 7 until 17 d. Multivariate ANOVA highlighted the effect of time point and feeding regimen among profile patterns. The use of different genotypes and feeding regimens influenced variability, which was measured by mean Euclidean distances and ellipses of the PCA plots. These treatment effects, however, did not mask the developmental patterns. After 17 d, the proteomic patterns converged, suggesting that a level of biological stability was achieved regardless of the genotype or treatment. The developmental pattern obtained by the PCA methodology can aid in the planning of more efficient experimental designs so the developmental stage of individuals can be more accurately assessed.

The horse is a grazing animal by nature and will forage 16-18 h per day if given the opportunity. However, today’s management practices often include restricted access to forage and feeding high amounts of concentrates in a limited number of meals throughout the day. Infrequent meals may lead to increases in stereotypic behaviors such as weaving and crib-biting. Therefore, to mimic the natural grazing patterns of the horse and decrease the incidence of stereotypic behavior, it may be beneficial to divide larger portions of the daily ration into smaller, more frequent meals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of feeding an identical diet, with different meal frequencies and order of delivery, on behavior and activity level in horses during periods of confinement and turnout. Six Quarter Horse mares (7 ± 5 yr; 524 ± 87 kg) were used in a 6 x 6 Latin square design. Each horse received a similar quantity of feed per day (2.0% of BW of a mixed-grass hay and 0.5% of BW of a 12% CP pelleted concentrate) and was randomly assigned to one of six feeding protocols during the 7 d period: 1 meal/d (08:00) with grain fed first followed by hay 15 min later (1GH) or hay fed first followed by grain 15 min later (1HG), 2 meals/d (08:00 and 18:00) with grain fed first followed by hay 15 min later (2GH) or hay fed first followed by grain 15 min later (2HG), 3 meals/d (08:00, 13:00, and 18:00) with grain fed first followed by hay 15 min later (3GH) or hay fed first followed by grain 15 min later (3HG). Behaviors were observed each day before and after meal times (07:309:00, 12:30-14:00, and 17:30-19:00) using a scan sampling technique (6 scans/horse/5 min for 1.5 hr). Instantaneous scans (1 scan/horse/min for 2 h) were used to observe and record behaviors during daily turnout (9:30-11:30). Pedometers attached to the horse’s left front leg were used to determine activity by recording the number of footsteps taken. Horses fed more

Sera from chickens that consumed a known level of (-)-gossypol (-)-GP) exhibited bioactivity against human breast cancer cells in vitro. Based on this, it is conceivable that similar anti-breast cancer activities of different magnitudes will be exhibited in biological samples harvested from (-)-GP-fed layer hens. The experimental data generated in this study may influence the fundamental thinking regarding the utilization of low cost agricultural commodities such as (-)-GP cottonseed meal to produce value-added chemopreventive animal products.

Adenovirus (Ad) has been used in vivo and in vitro as a vector to carry a foreign gene for efficient gene delivery into various cell types and tissues of animals. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the Ad delivery system in primary avian cells. Primary cells isolated from the embryonic pectoralis major muscles of the chicken and quail were cultured and incubated with human recombinant Ad serotype 5 (Ad5) containing sequences encoding either the green fluorescence protein (GFP) gene alone, as a tracking marker, or both GFP and murine 3-hydroxyisobutyryl-CoA hydrolase (mHIBCH) as a target gene. The fluorescent GFP images showed the successful delivery of a target gene using Ad5 in the primary avian cultured cells. In addition, immunostaining of the myosin heavy chain (MyHC) in these cells indicated that a large population of the cells was myogenic. Colocalization of GFP-positive cells with MyHC staining was mostly found in MyHC-negative cells, indicating successful delivery of Ad5 into a large population of mononucleated cells. Furthermore, the current fluorescence study detected the dual expression of GFP and mHIBCH protein in GFP-positive cells. Finally, Western blot analysis confirmed that the Ad-mediated expression of mHIBCH protein was specific in primary cultures of avian myogenic cells and that the mHIBCH protein expression was continued for 15 d after infection in chicken primary cells. These data demonstrate that Ad5 is a feasible tool to express foreign genes in primary cultured cells of avian species, providing a new approach to study the function of genes of interest in muscle development and metabolism.