Recently, herpesvirus of turkeys (HVT), which was initially employed as a vaccine against Marek's disease (MD), has been shown to be a highly effective viral vector for producing recombinant vaccines ...that can simultaneously express the protective antigens of multiple poultry diseases. Prior to the development of commercial HVT-vectored dual-insert vaccines, the majority of HVT-vectored vaccines in use only contained a single foreign gene and were often generated using time-consuming and inefficient traditional recombination methods. The development of multivalent HVT-vectored vaccines that induce simultaneous protection against several avian diseases is of great value. In particular, efficacy interference between individual recombinant HVT vaccines can be avoided. Herein, we demonstrated the use of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology for the insertion of an IBDV (G2d) VP2 expression cassette into the UL45/46 region of the recombinant rHVT-HA viral genome to generate the dual insert rHVT-VP2-HA recombinant vaccine. The efficacy of this recombinant virus was also evaluated in specific pathogen-free (SPF) chickens. PCR and sequencing results showed that the recombinant virus rHVT-VP2-HA was successfully constructed. Vaccination with rHVT-VP2-HA produced high levels of specific antibodies against IBDV (G2d) and H9N2/Y280. rHVT-VP2-HA can provide 100% protection against challenges with IBDV (G2d) and H9N2/Y280. These results demonstrate that rHVT-VP2-HA is a safe and highly efficacious vaccine for the simultaneous control of IBDV (G2d) and H9N2/Y280.
Deep ocean water (DOW) obtained from a depth of more than 200 m includes abundant nutrients and minerals. DOW was proven to positively increase monascin (MS) and ankaflavin (AK) production and the ...anti-adipogenesis effect of Monascus-fermented red mold dioscorea (RMD). However, the influences that the major metals in DOW have on Monascus secondary metabolite biosynthesis and anti-adipogenesis remain unknown. Therefore, the major metals in DOW were used as the culture water to produce RMD. The secondary metabolites production and anti-adipogenesis effect of RMD cultured with various individual metal waters were investigated. In the results, the addition of water with Mg, Ca, Zn, and Fe increased MS and AK production and inhibited mycotoxin citrinin (CT). However, the positive influence may be contributed to the regulation of pigment biosynthesis. Furthermore, in the results of cell testing, higher lipogenesis inhibition was seen in the treatments of various ethanol extracts of RMD cultured with water containing Mg, K, Zn, and Fe than in those of RMD cultured with ultra-pure water. In conclusion, various individual metals resulted in different effects on MS and AK productions as well as the anti-adipogenesis effect of RMD, but the specific metals contained in DOW may cause synergistic or comprehensive effects that increase the significantly positive influence.
Additive nonlinear systems are one of the most widely used nonlinear and non-parametric models to describe nonlinear behaviors. A number of analysis and identification techniques have been developed ...in the literature for such systems. To apply, however, one has to make sure that the system is additive or can be approximated well by an additive system. This is a nontrivial problem and has eluded researchers for a long time. To the best of our knowledge, only scatter results are reported in the literature. The difficulties lie in the fact that the function and its structure are unknown so estimating its derivatives under an unknown multidimensional density function could be subject to the curse of dimensionality. In this paper, we present two methods to check if a system is additive. The first one estimates the squared derivative average via the Fourier transform. The other one directly estimates the squared derivative average in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) setting. For both methods, convergence results are established and practical numerical algorithms are developed.
The objectives of the study are to compare different modes and input-energy levels of ultrasonic radiation and mechanical shearing on the changes in mean diameter of resulted ionotropic gelation ...chitosan–sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP) nanoparticles, and to elucidate the different effects on the size and polydispersity difference caused by cavitation effects versus stretch effects owing to using different modes of mechanical energy. The results obtained were as follows: the particle size and reduction rate of ionotropic gelation chitosan–TPP can be manipulated by varying different mechanical energy of ultrasonic radiation or mechanical shearing. Effects of solution temperature on resulted nanoparticle size by ultrasonic treatment or by mechanical shearing were different. The higher the solution temperature, the lower the solution viscosity that facilitates the sporadic cavitation effect exerted on the chitosan molecules producing smaller molecular weight fragments than that produced by stretching effects. Mean diameter of nanoparticle decreased with increasing solution temperature in ultrasonic radiation samples.
Seeking new strategies to tune the intrinsic defect and optimize the thermoelectric performance via no or less use of external doped elements (i.e., plain optimization) is an important method to ...realize the sustainable development of thermoelectric materials. Meanwhile, creating dislocation defects in oxide systems is quite challenging because the rigid and stiff ionic/covalent bonds can hardly tolerate the large strain energy associated with dislocations. Herein, taking BiCuSeO oxide as an example, the present work reports a successful construction of dense lattice dislocations in BiCuSeO by self-doping of Se at the O site (i.e., Se
self-substitution), and achieves plain optimization of the thermoelectric properties with only external Pb doping. Owing to the self-substitution-induced large lattice distortion and the potential reinforcement effect by Pb doping, high-density (about 3.0 × 10
m
) dislocations form in the grains, which enhances the scattering strength of mid-frequency phonon and results in a substantial low lattice thermal conductivity of 0.38 W m
K
at 823 K in Pb-doped BiCuSeO. Meanwhile, Pb
doping and Cu vacancy markedly improve the electrical conductivity while maintaining a competitively high Seebeck coefficient, thereby contributing to a highest power factor of 942 μW m
K
. Finally, a remarkably enhanced
value of 1.32 is obtained at 823 K in Bi
Pb
Cu
Se
O
with almost compositional plainification. The high-density dislocation structure reported in this work will also provide a good inspiration for the design and construction of dislocations in other oxide systems.
This study reports a case of hepatoblastoma with onset at 30-weeks' gestation and rapid growth rate. The postnatal enhanced CT confirmed an intrahepatic mass with a size of 8.5 cm × 6.6 cm and a ...clear boundary accompanied by uneven enhancement, displacement, and narrow lumen of the hepatic vein due to compression. The alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) at birth was 1,002,632 ng/ml (normal level 48,406 ±34,718 ng/ml). A diagnosis of congenital hepatoblastoma was established based on the imaging and laboratory outcomes. The infant received chemotherapy of Cisplatin-5 fluorouracil-Vincristine (C5V) on the fourth day after birth. After four courses of C5V, a complete tumor resection was performed, and the postoperative pathology was consistent with mixed epithelial and mesenchymal hepatoblastoma. Four more courses of C5V and one course of C5VD (C5V plus doxorubicin) followed the surgery. Infectious diarrhea and acute kidney injury (stage I) occurred during chemotherapy, which recovered after anti-infection and symptomatic treatment. The patient is currently 2 years old and still in complete remission. In this case, the onset of hepatoblastoma was early, and the tumor grew rapidly, resulting in an obvious compression effect. Chemotherapy was started early after birth, and the curative effect was satisfactory, suggesting that the hepatoblastoma based on clinical diagnosis with rapid tumor progression and severe dysfunction of surrounding organs caused by compression should undergo chemotherapy as soon as possible if a pathological diagnosis cannot be obtained temporarily, which also plays an important role in improving the complete resection rate of intraoperative tumor and reducing the recurrence rate of postoperative tumor.
Depressive disorders and internet addiction (IA) are often comorbid. The aims of this study were to examine the network structure of IA in patients with major depressive disorders (MDD) and explore ...the association between IA and quality of life (QoL) in this population. This was a multicenter, cross-sectional survey. IA and QoL were assessed with the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life-brief version, respectively. Node expected influence (EI) was used to identify central symptoms in the network model, while the flow network of QoL was generated to examine its association with IA. A total of 1,657 patients with MDD was included. "Preoccupation with the Internet," "Job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet," and "Neglect chores to spend more time online" were central symptoms. The symptom "Form new relationships with online users" had the strongest direct positive relation with QoL, while "Spend more time online over going out with others" and "Job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet" had the strongest direct negative relations with QoL. Neglecting work caused by IA correlated with QoL, while making friends online appropriately was related to better QoL among MDD patients. Appropriate interventions targeting the central symptoms may potentially prevent or reduce the risk of IA in MDD patients.
Dyslipidemia contributes to the risk of many diseases, including stroke, cardiovascular disease and metabolic-related diseases. Previous studies have indicated that single nucleotide polymorphisms ...(SNPs) are associated with different levels of serum lipid. Therefore, this study explored the relationship between the
gene cluster gene polymorphisms and dyslipidemia in the total sample population and stratified by genders in a northeast Chinese population.
A total of 3,850 participants from Jilin Province, China, were enrolled in our study, and their serum lipid levels were measured. Six functional SNPs (
rs5072,
rs5128,
rs5104,
rs651821,
rs2075294 and
rs10488698) were genotyped using polymerase chain reaction and MALDI-TOF-MS. Logistic regression analysis was performed to explore the relationship of
gene cluster gene polymorphisms with dyslipidemia. Linkage disequilibrium and haplotype analyses were performed with the SNPStats program and Haploview software.
All SNPs conformed to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Logistic regression analysis revealed that rs5072, rs5128 and rs651821 were associated with hypertriglyceridemia, rs5104 and rs651821 were associated with low-HDL cholesterolemia in overall group. rs651821 was associated with hypertriglyceridemia and low-HDL cholesterolemia in both the male and female group. However, among females, rs5072 was observed to be associated with hypertriglyceridemia. Haplotype analysis showed that haplotypes TGCCGC and CAGCGC were associated with dyslipidemia in the overall, male and female groups.
SNPs in the
gene cluster were associated with dyslipidemia. Furthermore, the association of
rs5072 in this gene cluster with dyslipidemia differed between genders; thus, additional studies are needed to confirm this conclusion, and the mechanisms underlying these results warrant further exploration.
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