Optical biopsy identification and grading of gliomas using label-free visible resonance Raman spectroscopy.

Glioma is one of the most refractory types of brain tumor. Accurate tumor boundary identification and complete resection of the tumor are essential for glioma removal during brain surgery. We present a method based on visible resonance Raman (VRR) spectroscopy to identify glioma margins and grades. A set of diagnostic spectral biomarkers features are presented based on tissue composition changes revealed by VRR. The Raman spectra include molecular vibrational fingerprints of carotenoids, tryptophan, amide I/II/III, proteins, and lipids. These basic in situ spectral biomarkers are used to identify the tissue from the interface between brain cancer and normal tissue and to evaluate glioma grades. The VRR spectra are also analyzed using principal component analysis for dimension reduction and feature detection and support vector machine for classification. The cross-validated sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy are found to be 100%, 96.3%, and 99.6% to distinguish glioma tissues from normal brain tissues, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the classification is about 1.0. The accuracies to distinguish normal, low grade (grades I and II), and high grade (grades III and IV) gliomas are found to be 96.3%, 53.7%, and 84.1% for the three groups, respectively, along with a total accuracy of 75.1%. A set of criteria for differentiating normal human brain tissues from normal control tissues is proposed and used to identify brain cancer margins, yielding a diagnostic sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 71%. Our study demonstrates the potential of VRR as a label-free optical molecular histopathology method used for in situ boundary line judgment for brain surgery in the margins

Effects of Chitosan on Body Weight Gain, Growth Hormone and Intestinal Morphology in Weaned Pigs

The study was conducted to determine the effects of chitosan on the concentrations of GH and IGF-I in serum and small intestinal morphological structure of piglets, in order to evaluate the regulating action of chitosan on weaned pig growth through endocrine and intestinal morphological approaches. A total of 180 weaned pigs (35 d of age; 11.56±1.61 kg of body weight) were selected and assigned randomly to 5 dietary treatments, including 1 basal diet (control) and 4 diets with chitosan supplementation (100, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 mg/kg, respectively). Each treatment contained six replicate pens with six pigs per pen. The experiment lasted for 28 d. The results showed that the average body weight gain (BWG) of pigs was improved quadratically by dietary chitosan during the former 14 d and the later 14 d after weaned (p<0.05). Furthermore, dietary supplementation of chitosan tended to quadratically increase the concentration of serum GH on d 14 (p = 0.082) and 28 (p = 0.087). Diets supplemented with increasing levels of chitosan increased quadratically the villus height of jejunum and ileum on d 14 (p = 0.089, p<0.01) and 28 (p = 0.074, p<0.01), meanwhile, chitosan increased quadratically the ratio of villus height to crypt depth in duodenum, jejunum and ileum on d 14 (p<0.05, p = 0.055, p<0.01) and 28 (p<0.01, p<0.01, p<0.01), however, it decreased quadratically crypt depth in ileum on d 14 (p<0.05) and that in duodenum, jejunum and ileum on d 28 (p<0.01, p<0.05, p<0.05). In conclusion, these results indicated that chitosan could quadratically improve growth in weaned pigs, and the underlying mechanism may due to the increase of the serum GH concentration and improvement of the small intestines morphological structure

Effects of dietary energy level on antioxidant capability, immune function and rectal microbiota in late gestation donkeys

IntroductionThis study investigated the effects of dietary energy level on the antioxidant capability, immune function, and rectal microbiota in donkey jennets during the last 60 days of gestation.MethodsFifteen pregnant DeZhou donkeys with age of 6.0 ± 0.1 years, body weight of 292 ± 33 kg, parity of 2.7 ± 0.1 parities and similar expected date of confinement (74 ± 4 days) were randomly allocated to three groups and feed three diets: high energy (10.92 MJ/kg, H), medium energy (10.49 MJ/kg, M), and low energy (9.94 MJ/kg, L).Results and DiscussionThe serum activity of catalase (CAT), total superoxide dismutase (T-SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), and total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) in group M was significantly higher, whereas the concentrations of malondialdehyde (MDA), interleukin 1 (IL-1), IL-2, and IL-6 were lower than those recorded for groups H and L (p ≤ 0.05). The dietary energy level significantly affected rectal microbial community structure in the jennet donkeys 35 days and 7 days before the parturition (p ≤ 0.05). The abundances of norank_f_norank_o_Coriobacteriales genus was significantly higher (p ≤ 0.05) in group H, and the abundances of norank_f_norank_o_Mollicutes_RF39 and the Candidatus_Saccharimonas were higher in group L (p ≤ 0.05). The abundance of Fibrobacter in group M was significantly increased (p ≤ 0.05). The abundance of norank_f_norank_o_Coriobacteriales was positively correlated with average daily gain (ADG) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) concentrations (p ≤ 0.05). The abundance of norank_f_norank_o_Mollicutes_RF39 was positively correlated with IL-2 and IL-6 concentrations. The abundance of Candidatus_Saccharimonas was positively correlated with CAT, T-SOD and GSH-Px activities (p ≤ 0.05). The abundance of Fibrobacter was positively correlated with CAT and T-SOD activities (p ≤ 0.05), but negatively correlated with IL-2 concentration (p ≤ 0.05). In conclusion, an appropriate dietary with an energy content of 10.49 MJ/kg for jennet donkeys during late gestation increased the prenatal antioxidant capacity, reduced inflammatory cytokines, and promoted fetal growth, and these changes were related to diet-induced changes in rectal microbiota compositions

The pre-protective effect of vitamin A on LPS-induced oxidative stress of bovine mammary epithelial cells

All-trans retinoic acid (RA, derivative of vitamin A) has been demonstrated to have anti-oxidative activity and is needed for the proper function of the immune system. In this study, the protective effects of RA against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced oxidative stress on bovine mammary epithelial cells (BMECs) have been investigated. BMECs were divided into four equal groups with six replicates. The first group was used as a control without RA or LPS. The three experimental groups were treated with RA (1 μg/mL) alone, LPS (1 μg/mL) alone and RA plus LPS, respectively. The cells were treated for 30 h in all. Our results showed that cells in LPS-treated group have a significantly higher inflammatory cytokines concentration and NF-κBp50 and NF-κBp65 gene expression than the control (p < .01). Furthermore, compared with control, selenoproteins’ activity of glutathione peroxidase (GPx), thioredoxin reductase (TrxR), the concentration of SelP and the gene expression of Nrf2 were significantly decreased while the activity of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), the production of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malonaldehyde (MDA) were elevated dramatically in LPS-treated group (p < .01). However, RA in combination with LPS enhanced the antioxidant enzyme activities of selenoprotein compared to LPS-treated group. In conclusion, RA ameliorated the LPS-induced BMECs damage by improving levels of antioxidant markers and reducing inflammatory cytokines contents, indicating that RA has the potential to counter measure the immunosuppressive condition on BMECs oxidative damage and to improve antioxidative function. However, further studies are still required to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying the protective effects of RA as an antioxidant

SOMOphilic Alkynylation of Unreactive Alkenes Enabled by Iron-Catalyzed Hydrogen Atom Transfer

We report an efficient and practical iron-catalyzed hydrogen atom transfer protocol for assembling acetylenic motifs into functional alkenes. Diversities of internal alkynes could be obtained from readily available alkenes and acetylenic sulfones with excellent Markovnikov selectivity. An iron hydride hydrogen atom transfer catalytic cycle was described to clarify the mechanism of this reaction

Plant Extracts to Alleviating Heat Stress in Dairy Cows

Heat stress (HS) in cows is a critical issue in the dairy industry. Dairy cows accumulate heat from body metabolism, along with that imposed by air temperature, humidity, air flow and solar radiation. HS in animals can occur during hot and humid summers when the ambient temperature is extremely high. Dairy cows have relatively high feed intakes and metabolic heat production and are thus susceptible to HS, leading to reductions in feed intake, lower milk yield, affected milk quality, reduced animal health and even shortening the productive lifespan of cows. Therefore, alleviating HS is a top priority for the dairy industry. Suitable plant extracts have advantages in safety, efficiency and few toxic side effects or residues for applications to alleviate HS in dairy cows. This paper reviews the effects of some plant extract products on alleviating HS in dairy cows and briefly discusses their possible mechanisms of action

Effects of concentrate supplementation on fatty acid composition and expression of lipogenic genes of meat and adipose tissues in grazing lambs

Effects of natural grazing (NG) or grazing with supplementary feeding (GS) of Hulunbeier lambs (HL) and Hulunbeier × Dorper crossbred lambs (HZ) on fatty acid (FA) profile and lipogenic gene expressions in the longissimus thoracis (LT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) were determined. The study was conducted as a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement using four-month old lambs. Thirty animals were divided into each group. The FA composition and the expression of lipid metabolism gene of sheep were affected by the feeding regimens and animal breeds. Compared with NG, GS increases de novo FA synthesis of LT and SAT, which decreases GS lambs’ FA nutrition value. Meat or fat from NG lambs present more n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated FA that is beneficial to human health. Under the two feeding regimens, de novo synthesis of FA and fat deposition seems to higher in HZ lambs compared with those in HL as the expression of genes (SREBP1c, FAS, ACC, C/EBPα, PPARγ) that are associated with correlative metabolism was increased in HZ lambs. Meat from HZ lambs displays a less favourable level of saturated FA as containing higher content of C14:0, but it also presents higher profile of EPA than HL lambs.Highlights Feeding ways and breeds affect fatty acids and gene. Meat from grazing lambs is beneficial to human health. Supplementary feeding increases fat deposition

Effects of Artemisia ordosica polysaccharide on growth performance and antioxidant capacity in broilers

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to investigate the effects of dietary Artemisia ordosica polysaccharide (AOP) supplementation on broilers’ growth performance and antioxidant function. A total of 288 1-day-old Arbor Acre broilers were randomly divided into 6 groups with 6 replicates each (n = 8). The groups contained a control diet group (basal diet, CON), an antibiotic diet group (basal diet + 50 mg/kg chlortetracycline, CTC) and AOP diet groups (basal diet containing 250, 500, 750, 1000 mg/kg AOP, respectively). The experiment included starter phase (days 1–21) and grower phase (days 22–42). The results showed that adding 750 mg/kg AOP increased the average daily gain (ADG), decreased feed/gain (F/G). Adding 500–1000 mg/kg AOP in the diet of broilers increased the activities of total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) in spleen, liver and small intestine (P < 0.05). The addition of AOP increased the gene expression levels of nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), CAT, GSH-Px and SOD in Nrf2 signalling pathway. Our data suggested that AOP could improve broilers’ growth performance and antioxidant function. Therefore, AOP may be used as a growth promotion and antioxidant feed additive in broiler chickens instead of antibiotics

Effects of chitosan as growth promoter on diarrhea, nutrient apparent digestibility, fecal microbiota and immune response in weaned piglets

The efficacy of chitosan (CS) to enhance performance, immune response and reduce diarrhea rate in weaned piglets was evaluated. A total of 24 piglets were individually housed in pens. Animals received 1 of 2 dietary treatments: a control diet to which 500 mg/kg CS was added. The experiment lasted for 14 days. Body weight was recorded and daily feed intake was calculated. Fecal consistency was monitored throughout the experiment. At the end of the trial, blood and feces samples were collected to determine immune parameters, nutrient apparent digestibility and fecal microbial populations. Results showed that CS improved daily weight gain (p < .01) and feed conversion ratio (p < .01) during the overall period. Fecal score values were improved by CS compared to the control diet (p < .001) and showing decreased values in the entire period. The CS addition decreased E.coli (p = .02), Salmonella (p < .01) and Staphylococcus aureus (p < .01) counts, and increased the ratio of Lactobacillus to E.coli (p = .04) in the feces. Serum IL-2 (p = .02) and IgG (p = .07) levels were increased and serum cortisol (p < .05) was lowered in CS group compared to control group. The results suggested that the use of CS could improve performance and immune response of weaned piglets by promoting nutrient apparent digestibility, regulating the fecal microbiota as well as increasing serum IL-2 and IgG concentrations and decreasing serum cortisol level