Natural Growth Promoters Replacing Traditional Growth Promoters in Diets for Light Replacement Pullets: A Systematic Approach

ABSTRACT The effect of using natural growth promoters (NGP) to replace traditional antimicrobials on performance, biometry of digestive and reproductive organs, sexual maturity and bone characteristics of replacement pullets was evaluated; and the relationship between these variables according to the diets was verified. Eight-week-old birds were randomly assigned to a completely randomized design and fed different diets: negative control (without growth promoters); positive control - conventional growth promoter; organic acids (OA); symbiotic (S); essential oil (EO); OA + S; and EO + S. The performance, relative weight of digestive and reproductive organs and length intestines, height and crest length, sternum length, bone quality and sexual maturity of birds were similar (p>0.05) between treatments. The heat map combined with cluster analysis showed a uniform static pattern with the formation of three horizontal groups formed by the treatments: 1) negative control, S and OA + S; 2) positive control and OE and 3) OA and OE + S. A null relationship between the treatments and the variables under study was observed. The principal components analysis revealed an association of variables in three components with 60.55% of variation. NGP can replace traditional promoters, as they do not interfere with performance, biometrics or sexual maturity. Height and length are predictive variables for the development of reproductive organs, especially the oviduct. A similarity was identified through multivariate techniques between symbiotic and organic + symbiotic acids; positive control and essential oils; and organic and symbiotic acids + essential oils

Association of alpha1a-adrenergic receptor polymorphism and blood pressure phenotypes in the Brazilian population

Background: The alpha1A-adrenergic receptor (alpha(1A)-AR) regulates the cardiac and peripheral vascular system through sympathetic activation. Due to its important role in the regulation of vascular tone and blood pressure, we aimed to investigate the association between the Arg347Cys polymorphism in the alpha(1A)-AR gene and blood pressure phenotypes, in a large sample of Brazilians from an urban population. Methods: A total of 1568 individuals were randomly selected from the general population of the Vitoria City metropolitan area. Genetic analysis of the Arg347Cys polymorphism was conducted by polymerase chain reaction/restriction fragment length polymorphism. We have compared cardiovascular risk variables and genotypes using ANOVA, and Chi-square test for univariate comparisons and logistic regression for multivariate comparisons. Results: Association analysis indicated a significant difference between genotype groups with respect to diastolic blood pressure (p = 0.04), but not systolic blood pressure (p = 0.12). In addition, presence of the Cys/Cys genotype was marginally associated with hypertension in our population (p = 0.06). Significant interaction effects were observed between the studied genetic variant, age and physical activity. Presence of the Cys/Cys genotype was associated with hypertension only in individuals with regular physical activity (odds ratio = 1.86; p = 0.03) or younger than 45 years (odds ratio = 1.27; p = 0.04). Conclusion: Physical activity and age may potentially play a role by disclosing the effects of the Cys allele on blood pressure. According to our data it is possible that the Arg347Cys polymorphism can be used as a biomarker to disease risk in a selected group of individuals.FAPESP (Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo)[2001/03454-5

Coinfection with Different Trypanosoma cruzi Strains Interferes with the Host Immune Response to Infection

A century after the discovery of Trypanosoma cruzi in a child living in Lassance, Minas Gerais, Brazil in 1909, many uncertainties remain with respect to factors determining the pathogenesis of Chagas disease (CD). Herein, we simultaneously investigate the contribution of both host and parasite factors during acute phase of infection in BALB/c mice infected with the JG and/or CL Brener T. cruzi strains. JG single infected mice presented reduced parasitemia and heart parasitism, no mortality, levels of pro-inflammatory mediators (TNF-α, CCL2, IL-6 and IFN-γ) similar to those found among naïve animals and no clinical manifestations of disease. On the other hand, CL Brener single infected mice presented higher parasitemia and heart parasitism, as well as an increased systemic release of pro-inflammatory mediators and higher mortality probably due to a toxic shock-like systemic inflammatory response. Interestingly, coinfection with JG and CL Brener strains resulted in intermediate parasitemia, heart parasitism and mortality. This was accompanied by an increase in the systemic release of IL-10 with a parallel increase in the number of MAC-3+ and CD4+ T spleen cells expressing IL-10. Therefore, the endogenous production of IL-10 elicited by coinfection seems to be crucial to counterregulate the potentially lethal effects triggered by systemic release of pro-inflammatory mediators induced by CL Brener single infection. In conclusion, our results suggest that the composition of the infecting parasite population plays a role in the host response to T. cruzi in determining the severity of the disease in experimentally infected BALB/c mice. The combination of JG and CL Brener was able to trigger both protective inflammatory immunity and regulatory immune mechanisms that attenuate damage caused by inflammation and disease severity in BALB/c mice

A Review of Supervised Machine Learning Applied to Ageing Research

Broadly speaking, supervised machine learning is the computational task of learning correlations between variables in annotated data (the training set), and using this information to create a predictive model capable of inferring annotations for new data, whose annotations are not known. Ageing is a complex process that affects nearly all animal species. This process can be studied at several levels of abstraction, in different organisms and with different objectives in mind. Not surprisingly, the diversity of the supervised machine learning algorithms applied to answer biological questions reflects the complexities of the underlying ageing processes being studied. Many works using supervised machine learning to study the ageing process have been recently published, so it is timely to review these works, to discuss their main findings and weaknesses. In summary, the main findings of the reviewed papers are: the link between specific types of DNA repair and ageing, ageing-related proteins tend to be highly connected and seem to play a central role in molecular pathways; ageing/longevity is linked with autophagy and apoptosis, nutrient receptor genes, and copper and iron ion transport. Additionally, several biomarkers of ageing were found by machine learning. Despite some interesting machine learning results, we also identified a weakness of current works on this topic: only one of the reviewed papers has corroborated the computational results of machine learning algorithms through wet-lab experiments. In conclusion, supervised machine learning has contributed to advance our knowledge and has provided novel insights on ageing, yet future work should have a greater emphasis in validating the predictions

A nontoxic polypeptide oligomer with a fungicide potency under agricultural conditions which is equal or greater than that of their chemical counterparts

Research ArticleThere are literally hundreds of polypeptides described in the literature which exhibit fungicide activity. Tens of them have had attempted protection by patent applications but none, as far as we are aware, have found application under real agricultural conditions. The reasons behind may be multiple where the sensitivity to the Sun UV radiation can come in first place. Here we describe a multifunctional glyco-oligomer with 210 kDa which is mainly composed by a 20 kDa polypeptide termed Blad that has been previously shown to be a stable intermediary product of β-conglutin catabolism. This oligomer accumulates exclusively in the cotyledons of Lupinus species, between days 4 and 12 after the onset of germination. Blad-oligomer reveals a plethora of biochemical properties, like lectin and catalytic activities, which are not unusual per si, but are remarkable when found to coexist in the same protein molecule. With this vast range of chemical characteristics, antifungal activity arises almost as a natural consequence. The biological significance and potential technological applications of Blad-oligomer as a plant fungicide to agriculture, its uniqueness stems from being of polypeptidic in nature, and with efficacies which are either equal or greater than the top fungicides currently in the market are addressedinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio