Male-derived sterility in cattle-yaks, a hybrid deriving from yak and cattle, is a challenging problem. This study compared and analyzed the histomorphological differences in testis between sexually ...mature yak and cattle-yak, and examined the transcriptome differences employing RNA-seq. The study found that yak seminiferous tubules contained spermatogenic cells at all levels, while cattle-yak seminiferous tubules had reduced spermatogonia (SPG) and primary spermatocyte (Pri-SPC), fewer secondary spermatocytes (Sec-SPC), an absence of round spermatids (R-ST) and sperms (S), and possessed large vacuoles. All of these conditions could have significantly reduced the volume and weight of cattle-yak testis compared to that of yak. RNA-seq analysis identified 8473 differentially expressed genes (DEGs; 3580 upregulated and 4893 downregulated). GO (Gene Ontology) and KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) enrichment evaluations for DEGs found their relation mostly to spermatogenesis and apoptosis. Among the DEGs, spermatogonia stem cell (SSCs) marker genes (Gfra1, CD9, SOHLH1, SALL4, ID4, and FOXO1) and genes involved in apoptosis (Fas, caspase3, caspase6, caspase7, caspase8, CTSK, CTSB and CTSC) were significantly upregulated, while differentiation spermatogenic cell marker genes (Ccna1, PIWIL1, TNP1, and TXNDC2) and meiosis-related genes (TEX14, TEX15, MEIOB, STAG3 and M1AP) were significantly downregulated in cattle-yak. Furthermore, the alternative splicing events in cattle-yak were substantially decreased than in yak, suggesting that the lack of protein subtypes could be another reason for spermatogenic arrest in cattle-yak testis.
Although the FDA has given emergency use authorization (EUA) for some antiviral drugs for the treatment of COVID-19, no direct antiviral drugs have been identified for the treatment of critically ill ...patients, the most important treatment is suppression of the hyperinflammation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of corticosteroids in hospitalized severe or critical patients positive for COVID-19. This is a retrospective single-center descriptive study. Patients classified as having severe or critical COVID-19 infections with acute respiratory dysfunction syndrome in Shenzhen Third People’s Hospital were enrolled from January 11th to March 30th, 2020. Ninety patients were classified as having severe or critical COVID-19 infections. The patients were treated with methylprednisolone with a low-to-moderate dosage and short duration. The days from the symptom onset to methylprednisolone were about 8 days. Eighteen patients were treated with invasive ventilation and intensive care unit (ICU) care. All the patients in the severe group and ten in the critical group recovered and were discharged. Three critical cases with invasive ventilation died. Although cases were much more severe in the corticosteroid-treated group, the mortality was not significantly increased. Early use of low-to-moderate dosage and short duration of corticosteroid may be the more accurate immune-modulatory treatment and brings more benefits to severe patients with COVID-19.
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak started in Wuhan, Hubei, China since Dec 2019 and cases of infection have been continuously reported in various countries. It is now clear that ...the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus is transmissible from human to human. Nucleic acid detection is considered as the gold standard for the diagnosis of COVID-19. In this case report, we describe our experience in detection of SARS-COV-2 from a confirmed patient using nucleic acid test of bronchoalveolar-lavage fluid (BALF) samples but not nasopharyngeal swabs.
We present a case of severely ill SARS-COV-2 infected 46-year-old man with fever, coughing and chest tightness. We performed viral detection using his BALF samples and imaging method (CT) for confirmation. The patient received combination of interferonalfa-1b and ribavirin, lopinavir and ritonavir for antiviral treatment at different stages. Other medication was also given to him in combination for anti-inflammation, intestinal microbial regulation, phlegm elimination, liver protection and pulmonary fibrosis prevention purposes. We provided oxygen supply to him using BIPAP ventilator and high-flow humidification oxygen therapy instrument to facilitate respiration. The patient was cured and discharged.
This case report described an effective supportive medication scheme to treat SARS-COV-2 infected patient and emphasized the necessity of detection of the viral genome using BALF samples and its significance in the diagnosis and prognosis of the disease.
To further explore the effect of vaccination regimen and frequency on clinical outcomes of breakthrough infections caused by the Omicron variant, as well as the durability of vaccine effectiveness.
A ...retrospective, propensity score matching, real-world cohort study was conducted. Vaccination frequency was categorized into regular vaccination, first booster, and second booster.
A total of 7428 cases were included, with 3910 (53 %) being male. The median age was 39 years. BA.2 than BA.5/5.2 infection presented with more pulmonary symptoms and fewer influenza-like symptoms. Among the 3516 cases of BA.5/5.2 breakthrough infections, patients who received the second booster than the first booster or regular vaccination had higher first IgM and IgG titers and first cycle thredhold values for N gene on admission, a lower percentage of fever, lower peak body temperatures, and a higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. Patients who received the first booster vaccinated with homologous mRNA or heterologous inactivated plus mRNA vaccines than homologous inactivated vaccines had higher first IgM and IgG titers, a higher percentage of asymptomatic cases, and a lower percentage of fever. Moreover, significantly different first IgG titers were observed among patients receiving the second booster vaccinated with any of the three regimens. There was no statistical difference between booster regimens of homologous mRNA vaccines and heterologous inactivated plus mRNA vaccines. Patients in Month 7- than Month 0–6 after the first booster had lower first IgM and IgG titers and first cycle thredhold values, a lower percentage of asymptomatic cases, and a higher percentage of fever; and a higher percentage of pneumonia after the second booster.
Repeated booster vaccinations every six months, with priority given to heterologous mRNA vaccine booster regimens in countries previously primarily using inactivated vaccines, may provide protection for adult patients with Omicron-variant breakthrough infections and improve clinical outcomes.
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•BA.2 than BA.5/5.2 infection presented with more pneumonia and fewer influenza-like symptoms.•The second booster was the best to improve clinical outcomes among three vaccination frequencies.•Homologous mRNA or heterologous inactivated plus mRNA vaccine booster regimens were superior.•The durability of the effectiveness of booster vaccination was approximately six months.
Exposing counterfeit perfume products is significant for protecting the legal profit of genuine perfume manufacturers and the health of perfume consumers. As a holistic solution to the problem of ...perfume identification (PI) using an electronic nose (EN), the methods based on convolutional neural network (CNN) simplifies the inconvenient selection of methods and parameter values, which has traditionally complicated existing combinatory methods. However, existing CNN methods that can be used for EN-based PI were designed on the premise that the CNN model can be trained with plenty of computational resources in divide-body ENs. Aiming at PI with an integrated handheld EN, a novel light-weight CNN method, namely LwCNN, is presented for being entirely conducted on a resource-constrained NVDIA Jetson nano module. LwCNN utilizes a sequenced stack of two feature flattening layers, two one-dimensional (1D) convolutional layers, a 1D max-pooling layer, a feature dropout layer, and a fully connected layer. Extensive real experiments were conducted on an integrated handheld EN to the performance of LwCNN with those of four existing benchmark methods. Experimental results show that LwCNN obtained an average identification accuracy of 98.35% with model training time of about 26 s.
Background: This study aims to analyze the changes and significance of organ function indices in patients with severe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia for prediction of major organ ...damages and guiding treatment schemes. Methods: 63 patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia were selected as the severe group and 73 patients with mild syndromes were selected as the mild group. SAS9.4 software was used for statistical analysis of the data. Results: Levels of ALT, AST, cTnI, Cr, PT, APTT and Ddimer of the severe group were significantly higher while PLT was lower than those of the mild group. The data of all quantitative variables were converted into categorical variables. Significantly higher levels of AST, ALB, D-dimer and higher proportion of bilateral lung involvement were observed from the severe group comparing to those in the mild group, while the difference in the other indices between the two groups was insignificant in statistical perspective. Conclusions: There are significant differences in the levels of multiple organ function indices between the severe group and the mild group of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia infection. Through examining the relevant indices, conditions of patients' multiple organ function damage could be predicted and used as guidance of treatment.
The utilization of yak milk is still in a primary stage, and the nutrition composition of yak colostrum is not systematically characterized at present. In this study, the lipids, fatty acids, amino ...acids and their derivatives, metabolites in yak colostrum, and mature milk were detected by the non-targeted lipidomics based on (ultra high performance liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer) UHPLC-MS, the targeted metabolome based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS), the targeted metabolome analysis based on UHPLC-MS, and the non-targeted metabolome based on ultra high performance liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometer (UHPLC-TOF-MS), respectively. Meanwhile, the nutrition composition of yak colostrum was compared with the data of cow mature milk in the literatures. The results showed that the nutritive value of yak colostrum was higher by contrast with yak and cow mature milk from the perspective of the fatty acid composition and the content of Σpolyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), Σn-3PUFAs; the content of essential amino acid (EAA) and the ratio of EAA/total amino acid (TAA) in yak colostrum were higher than the value in yak mature milk; and the content of functional active lipids including phosphatidylcholines (PC), phosphatidylglycerol (PG), phosphatidylserine (PS), lyso-phosphatidylcholine (LPC), lyso-phosphatidylglycerol (LPG), lyso-phosphatidylinositol (LPI), sphingomyelin (SM), ganglioside M3 (GM3), ganglioside T3 (GT3), and hexaglycosylceramide (Hex1Cer) in yak colostrum, was higher than the value of yak mature milk. Moreover, the differences of nutritive value between yak colostrum and mature milk were generated by the fat, amino acids and carbohydrate metabolism that were regulated by the ovarian hormone and referencesrenin-angiotensin-aldosterone system in yaks. These research results can provide a theoretical basis for the commercial product development of yak colostrum.
Kecai yaks are regarded as an important genetic resource in China owing to their high fecundity and flavorful meat. However, the genetic characteristics of Kecai yaks have not been effectively ...characterized to date, and the relationship between Kecai yaks and other yak breeds remains to be fully characterized. In this paper, the resequencing of the Kecai yak genome is performed leading to the identification of 11,491,383 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Through principal component, phylogenetic, and population genetic structure analyses based on these SNPs, Kecai yaks were confirmed to represent an independent population of yaks within China. In this study, marker and functional enrichment analysis of genes related to positive selection in Kecai yak was carried out, and the results show that such selection in Kecai yaks is associated with the adaptation to alpine environments and the deposition of muscle fat. Overall, these results offer a theoretical foundation for the future utilization of Kecai yak genetic resources.
Studying the mechanism of spermatogenesis is key to exploring the reproductive characteristics of male yaks. Although N6-methyladenosine (m6A) RNA modification has been reported to regulate ...spermatogenesis and reproductive function in mammals, the molecular mechanism of m6A in yak testis development and spermatogenesis remains largely unknown. Therefore, we collected testicular tissue from juvenile and adult yaks and found that the m6A level significantly increased after sexual maturity in yaks. In MeRIP-seq, 1702 hypermethylated peaks and 724 hypomethylated peaks were identified. The hypermethylated differentially methylated RNAs (DMRs) (CIB2, AK1, FOXJ2, PKDREJ, SLC9A3, and TOPAZ1) mainly regulated spermatogenesis. Functional enrichment analysis showed that DMRs were significantly enriched in the adherens junction, gap junction, and Wnt, PI3K, and mTOR signaling pathways, regulating cell development, spermatogenesis, and testicular endocrine function. The functional analysis of differentially expressed genes showed that they were involved in the biological processes of mitosis, meiosis, and flagellated sperm motility during the sexual maturity of yak testis. We also screened the key regulatory factors of testis development and spermatogenesis by combined analysis, which included BRCA1, CREBBP, STAT3, and SMAD4. This study indexed the m6A characteristics of yak testicles at different developmental stages, providing basic data for further research of m6A modification regulating yak testicular development.
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